Comparison of SmartGit and SourceTree (UPDATE 29.01.2016)
This blog post approaches the comparison of the git gui tools SmartGit
7.0.3 and SourceTree
1.6.23.0 on Windows.
I mostly use the command line for simple stuff, but I prefer gui tools for file merging and the faster separation of commits through git add -p
. The comparison of both tools is divided into different categories to better highlight each’s advantages and disadvantages and represented in the following table.
UPDATE 29.01.2016: Bad hunk button accessibility for big changes in SourceTree!
SmartGit | SourceTree | |
---|---|---|
Text Comparison | character by character | line by line, does not always work |
Binary Documents | no support | content and diffs of pdfs and office documents are displayed |
buttons for fast file opening | ||
License | commercial: fee-based | free of charge, registration required |
Language | english | system language |
Hunk Selection | no selection of lines by cursor | selection of lines by cursor |
sometimes no fine-granular hunk selection | bad recognition of hunks and no intuitive right-clicks | |
Merging | visualization and comparison | only whole file is displayed like in git |
of different file states | console | |
Miscellaneous | wants to change git settings | |
cannot consistently handle umlauts | ||
big files or changes require a lot of scrolling and therefore cause a bad accessibility of the hunk handling buttons |
The code to demonstrate my findings is published in this GitHub repository.
Since both tools have their pros and cons, there is no best tool which outperforms the other tool.
In consequence, you should select the best fitting tool based on my findings and your impression.
A free license in a commercial environment leads to the selection of SourceTree
, while an important
support for text change displays favors the application of SmartGit
.
Do you know other important factors I didn’t consider? Do some points need to be clarified?