gites/README.md

gites

A colorful viewer for the history of a git repository.
Linux and Windows desktop app, driven from the keyboard.

Download · Keys · Build from source

What it does

• Draws the commit graph. Every branch gets its own color. Labels on each commit show local branches, remote branches and tags, and the checked-out commit is ringed.

• Hides what you don't need. Hide one branch with its eye button in the sidebar, or with h on a commit. Type a pattern such as prototypes/* and choose hide or show only. The eye next to Tags hides all tags, also tags added later. gites remembers the filters of each repository.

• Folds long straight stretches. Commits in a row that have no branch, tag, fork or merge fold into one dotted line. c folds all of them, space opens or closes the one at the selected commit.

• Shows the selected commit in a panel at the bottom: the full message, the author and committer, the hash (click to copy), the parents (click to go there), and the files it changed with the number of added and removed lines.

• Shows what changed in a file. Click a file in the panel, or press Enter for the first one. Choose one of three layouts with v:

  • One column, as git diff prints it.
  • Side by side, the old file on the left and the new one on the right.
  • Inline, one line per changed line, with removed words struck out and added words marked. Best for prose, such as Markdown.

  In every layout, the words that changed inside a line are marked.

• Opens other repositories from a list of recent ones, or from a folder picker (o).

• Opens repositories on another machine. Write the place as [user@]host:path, for example gites myserver:/srv/app, or choose Open on another machine… in the repository menu (o) or on the welcome screen. host can be any host name from your ~/.ssh/config; that file is also where a port other than 22 goes. gites runs git on that machine through ssh, so git must be installed there. It logs in with your ssh keys or the ssh agent and never asks for a password, so a login that needs a password does not work. You see the history of the repository on that machine: its own branches and its checked-out branch, as for a repository on this computer.

• Stays current. gites reloads the repository when its window gets focus again.

Install

Download a package from the releases page:

System	File
Debian, Ubuntu	gites_<version>_amd64.deb
Fedora, openSUSE	gites-<version>-1.x86_64.rpm
Any Linux	gites_<version>_amd64.AppImage
Windows, installer	gites_<version>_x64-setup.exe
Windows, no install	gites_<version>_x64_portable.exe

gites runs the git command, so git must be installed and on your PATH.

Use

gites                     # the repository in the current folder
gites ~/code/my-project   # another repository
gites myserver:/srv/app   # a repository on another machine, over ssh

Keys

In the commit graph

Key	Action
↑ ↓ or k j	Select the previous or next commit
PgUp PgDn	Move one screen up or down
g G or Home End	Go to the first or last commit
Enter	Show what changed in the first file of the commit
space	Fold or unfold the straight stretch at the selected commit
c	Fold or unfold all straight stretches
h	Hide the branch of the selected commit
y	Copy the short hash
/	Type a filter pattern
p	Show or hide the preview panel
o	Open another repository
r	Reload

In a file's diff

Key	Action
↑ ↓ or k j	Scroll by one line
PgUp PgDn	Scroll by one screen
g G or Home End	Go to the top or bottom
n N	Go to the next or previous change
] [	Show the next or previous file of the commit
v	Switch the layout: one column, side by side, inline
Esc	Go back to the commit graph

Where gites keeps its settings

The window layout, the diff layout and the recent repositories are kept in settings.json, and the filters of each repository in filters.json. Both files are in the gites folder of your data folder: ~/.local/share/gites on Linux, %APPDATA%\gites on Windows.

Build from source

gites is a Tauri app: the window is Vue and TypeScript, and the part that runs git is Rust. mise installs the right versions of Node, Bun and Rust.

On Linux, Tauri also needs the WebKitGTK development packages. scripts/ci-setup.sh lists them for Debian and Ubuntu.

mise install          # Node, Bun and Rust
bun install           # packages for the window code

mise run dev          # run gites with live reload; add a path to open a repository
mise run test         # unit tests for the window code and the Rust code
mise run check        # type checks for both
mise run install      # build a release binary and install it as ~/.local/bin/gites

Pushing a tag such as v1.2.3 builds the Linux and Windows packages and publishes them on the releases page.