Axosoft GitKraken: Unleash Your Repo!

An introduction to the beautiful, new, intuitive and truly cross-platform Git client.

Until now, any dev working with a team on project code has had to make a compromise: opt for the “superuser” power of Git at the command line interface (CLI) level, or go for the less feature-rich but more visually intuitive graphical user interface (GUI) of a Git client. The CLI gives the most complete set of options, but usually at the expense of speed and the steep learning curve that comes with it. Persistently typing out sequences of commands to perform actions is labor-intensive and inefficient, and there is no visual representation of the commands being performed. Although clients offer the reassuring familiarity that comes with the GUI, they have a downside: the UIs are often aesthetically and functionally dated, and when you’re using a process or application all day, every day, that matters.

A small team of devs here at Axosoft, not satisfied with the existing options, wanted to create the Git client that devs like themselves always wanted. The CLI/GUI compromises above gave the team a creative challenge to make an app that was made for devs—with efficiency, elegance, simplicity and reliability at the core.

A 30-Second Backstory of Axosoft GitKraken

Every summer Axosoft does something amazing for its developers. We are given the creative freedom to work on a 30-day project to explore new ideas. These ideas can be anything—and weird and wonderful is encouraged. Even though many of them don’t make it past the drawing board stage, this freedom to explore empowers devs to think creatively, enabling ideas to flourish and potentially turn into fully-fledged long-term projects. In fact, Pure Chat was first conceived from a 30-day project, and last summer, a group of devs got the green light to fully explore and create the new Git client they felt the market needed: Axosoft GitKraken.

With the 30 days up, the team knew they were on to something that needed to continue. Now, Axosoft has expanded the project’s dev team into a full-time GitKraken team! With a full lineup of devs, GitKraken was rebuilt from scratch, and it’s a beauty to behold:

We’re going to dedicate some future blog posts to the finer details of what GitKraken has to offer, but here are a few highlights that you’ll notice instantly differentiate GitKraken from the rest of the pack.

For once, something exciting about installations

GitKraken is 100% standalone, so once you’ve run the installer, you can open the app and get going. It works directly with your repositories with no dependencies—you don’t even need to have Git installed on your system. GitKraken is built with NodeGit, a Git framework that is primarily developed and maintained by members of the GitKraken development team.

Fig. 1: Axosoft GitKraken dependencies and installation sequence
Fig. 1: Axosoft GitKraken dependencies and installation sequence

Mac, Windows and Linux

GitKraken is built on Electron, meaning it runs natively, cross-platform. Mac, Windows, and—yes—Linux users all get precisely the same in-app user experience.

Fig. 2: Axosoft GitKraken on your machine
Fig. 2: Axosoft GitKraken on your machine

Your Git client has a nice personality…

As you can see from the screenshots above, GitKraken looks great, thanks to elegant design focused on instinctive interactions. From the outset, GitKraken was built with the understanding that clean, intuitive UIs can yield huge user experience advantages. Unlike other clients, GitKraken is fully responsive, making the best use of your available screen real estate. Are you a dev who likes to use a vertically-oriented screen? GitKraken looks great whichever way you flip it!

Fig. 3: Beauty/Utility–How Axosoft GitKraken stacks up
Fig. 3: Beauty/Utility – How Axosoft GitKraken stacks up

To see how GitKraken takes functional design to a level of downright luxuriousness, let’s take a look at an example of a typical Git action, executed at the command line. In this example, we have changes we need to stash, and we are pulling from a branch that we do not have checked out.

CLI pull with stash and checkout

In GitKraken, you just right-click the branch you want to pull, and pull it:

Pulling without switching

Clearly not all GUI Git clients are created equal. With other clients, the efficiency advantages one expects from the UI over the CLI can be a false economy. Dialog boxes, selecting options, taking unnecessary steps–these are all things GitKraken’s dev team sought to minimize, wanting instead to produce a Git client that was fast, visually appealing, and totally functional. The result is an experience with fewer user interactions and more fluid workflows.

The GitKraken team is excited to share the features the app already has to offer, but why not check it out for yourself by helping to test it? Axosoft GitKraken is currently in private beta release and you can request an invite right now at gitkraken.com. If you’re already using GitKraken, leave a comment, tweet us, or start a chat with us telling us your experiences so far with using the app!

  • Elliot Derhay

    Sent my invite request. Really excited to try it out.

    Are you guys limiting it to devs who work on large teams, or are you accepting devs who are the only ones (currently) using Git?

    • http://www.axosoft.com/ Axosoft

      Hi Elliot, we’re excited to hear that you’re interested in trying out GitKraken! We’ll be sending you an invite shortly. Anyone can use GitKraken, regardless of team size (or lack thereof). Please let us know what you think once you get into the app!

      • Elliot Derhay

        Thanks! I’m very excited to test it out. I’ll be sure to give feedback once I’ve played around with it.

      • Elliot Derhay

        I just realized something: I sent the invite request under a different email. It was about 8:30 this morning. My bad…

      • Elliot Derhay

        Should I check back later? I haven’t gotten it yet. Checked my spam too.

        • http://www.axosoft.com/ Axosoft

          It can take a little while for invites to be processed–you will receive an email when it’s approved!

          • Elliot Derhay

            Alright. Thank you.

  • http://www.axosoft.com/ Axosoft

    Hi Sergio, that project has no relation to GitKraken. It’s an abandoned project from 4 years ago.

  • Robert Hencke

    I had started to write my own client based on Electron after coming to I am thinking a lot of the same conclusions you guys did – there was no Git UI offering that was feature-packed, easy-to-use, and fast (both technically and from a workflow perspective). But I’d rather use someone else’s – so I’m eager to see what you do!

  • Sergey Samokhov

    Has anyone managed to start GitKraken on Kubuntu 15.0.4? I’ve tried running 0.2.2 and 0.2.11 and they both just sat in memory not showing any GUI.
    It runs fine on Yosemite and Win 10 though.

    • James

      Try installing the latest version for Linux to see if will launch. We recently removed a dependency requirement in an update which may resolve the issue. We’re glad to see you’re up and running already on other platforms!

      • Sergey Samokhov

        Nope. Not there yet. I’ve even tried removing everything listed in the package and reinstalling. At least what’s listed in the v.0.2.11 and the latest 0.2.13. I didn’t keep 0.2.2, but maybe I should. Maybe something is still left from that version.

        • James

          :( If you are continuing to see issues can you submit feedback under Help from the client working on another platform and include any details on your install for Kubuntu? Running gitkraken from a Terminal may show additional information.

          • Sergey Samokhov

            Yeah, you’re right, I haven’t tried to run it from console yet.

            Ok, I’ll try it tonight or tomorrow morning.

          • Sergey Samokhov

            Solved it. I was missing a package called `libgnome-keyring0` in Ubuntu.

            But isn’t it ironic how you need terminal to not have to run git through terminal 😉

          • Daigoro Toyama

            Glad I came across this post. I had the exact same problem trying to run GitKraken on Kubuntu 14.04 to no avail. I installed libgnome-keyring0, and voila! it’s up and running now. Why was this dependency not resolved at install time?

  • http://www.learningtitanium.com Sharry

    Is there any docs for this? Got an invite code but cannot install on Ubuntu 14.04 via .debian link or tar.gz (see attachment for each)

    Sharry

    • James

      It looks like the dependency requirement for libstdc++ is not met in Ubuntu 14.04 and you will need to update gcc to at least 4.9 for the GitKraken install to work. We don’t currently have any specific systems docs but there are resources online for this process.

      • Rebecca Gellman

        Debian 7 doesn’t have libstdc++4.9.1-bleeding-edge either, and I really don’t want to bodge up a half-unstable Debian, or spend company time upgrading the entire install just to install this.

        Please reconsider building against a more common library version.

        • James

          Hi Rebecca! We’re looking into backpedaling the dependencies requirement to add native compatibility in releases like Debian 7 (minimum of 4.7.2).

          Prior to then, testing would require the update or optionally a dist upgrade to which we don’t expect testers to commit out of recent LTS.

          We hope to have you in GitKraken soon!

          • James

            Update! The requirement for this has been removed and in the latest version you should be able to install on Ubuntu 14.04 and Debian 7 without this dependency issue.

  • Mickey Moriarty

    It looks great by now in Linux Mint Rafaela. Nice app!!

  • Matthis Thorade

    I wonder where you placed GitExtensions on Figure 3.

  • Stephen RC

    Love it so far :-)
    How will updates work?
    I’m running on Ubuntu – will you release updates via a PPA, or will I need to download and manually install from your website each time you do an update?

    • James

      Thanks! We do too :)

      Auto-update is not yet implemented for Linux but we definitely plan on this and we’ll have to look to launchpad / PPA as well. As of now you can grab the latest version from the release download link provided in your invite.

  • Josh Hagins

    You say your team was dissatisfied with existing GUI clients, which prompted you to create GitKraken. Out of curiosity, what problems did you guys have with SourceTree and GitUp?

    • Hamid Shojaee

      We felt we could radically improve the user experience. Try GitKraken and let us know how we did. :)

      • Josh Hagins

        I have, and it’s great! I’ve already submitted a few bits of feedback through the in-app portal. I especially love the dark theme (a feature inexplicably missing from most other GUI clients).

        I was hoping for a little more detail, though. 😉SourceTree in particular is extremely feature-rich, more so than GitKraken, and has a similar commit tree layout (though I do think your version looks a bit less messy). Did you feel that it was too bloated, or that too many features were opaque to the user? Did you think the UI was too cluttered?

        On the other hand you have GitUp, which has an extremely clean and minimal UI and lightning-fast Git actions due to interacting directly with the object graph. Did you check this one out at all during planning?

        • Hamid Shojaee

          We don’t particularly look at any of the competing tools for a one-to-one comparison. However, in general, all the existing tools are based on what we consider to be outdated technologies, which forces them to be tied to a particular platform, with a fairly clunky user experience. GitKraken, on the other hand, uses the latest web-based technologies in a cross-platform desktop client. Pretty unique!

          Axosoft’s strength is in creating beautiful tools that are both feature rich and still provide an amazing user experience. GitKraken is still in early beta. :)

  • Elliot Derhay

    Have to say, love using it so far. Just waiting for the Bitbucket integration at the moment…

    Also, what does “Use Local SSH Agent” do? Is it the already-running ssh-agent process on my computer that uses my ssh config file, or is it an ssh-agent instance that GitKraken itself starts?

    • James

      Great to see! Bitbucket integration is “Coming Soon” – we’re planning on it :)

      The option you’re seeing once enabled is referring to your (already-running) local ssh-agent managed on your computer with which GitKraken then can utilize credentials.

      • Elliot Derhay

        Oh ok. Is that option working, or is it broken still? I keep getting an “unknown host” error when doing a push, pull or fetch (my remote URLs use aliases referred to in my ssh config).

        Works fine in Git Bash, but if it’s supposed to work in GK then would that mean it’s looking for an actual domain name in the remote url instead of an alias?

        • James

          We’re having issues with relative aliases on remotes within GK as well from .ssh/config but it works from CLI. We have made note of this and will look into it for upcoming improvements!

          • Elliot Derhay

            Will stick with CLI for this functionality for now then. Thanks.

            By the way, is there discussion for a `merge –no-ff` option in the future?

          • James

            Yes we have made note of this :)

          • Elliot Derhay

            Sweet!

      • Elliot Derhay

        As for the Bitbucket integration, I did see that. Just meant that that’s something I’m looking forward to.

  • http://www.colegeissinger.com/ ColeGeissinger

    One feature that I would love to see is integration with GitLab. I love and host a lot on GitHub, and have many other things on GitLab’s community servers. I have yet to find a GUI that also supports GitLab. 😀 Can’t wait to get access to the beta!

  • Phillip Elm

    Great work on GitKraken, guys. While the UI took a bit of getting used to, it’s far better than anything on the Linux market. Waiting for BitBucket support – once that’s working GK will be my go-to git client.

    That said – do you guys have an ETA on when BitBucket support is going to be released in the beta?

    • http://k40s.net/ Lukas Fülling

      Can’t you just use BitBucket like any other Git host?

    • James

      No ETA yet! We recently had a release and will look to add BitBucket support in the future. You can continue to clone repositories and add remotes in the default URL option.

  • Meghan Armes

    This looks awesome!
    I’m trying to run this on Win 7 Enterprise (64bit). I get no UI at all, though the process shows up in memory. Am I missing something?

    • hgrod

      @axosoft:disqus – is there any solution to this? I just got access to Beta and would love to use GitKraken, but seem to be having the same issue.

      • Meghan Armes

        I never got a reply (as you can see) but I was able to run the app on Windows 10. Not sure if there’s something wrong with my Windows 7 setup, or if it’s a bug in the app.

  • Bastian Rihm

    The programm is stuck for me into a loop of white screen and opening repo after opening a repo on Ubuntu 15.10

  • Dan Dineen

    Liking the look of GitKraken so far but wondering whether I can easily do an interactive rebase? I’ve looked around the interface but I can’t see anything that immediately jumps out.

    This is a key feature for me and one that is sorely lacking in my other fave Git GUI tool – Tower. I end up having to drop out of Tower and into terminal to tidy up before creating a PR which is *really* annoying.

    • Benjamin D. Smith

      In the meantime have you tried using SourceTree for Interactive Rebase? As that GUI has a pretty decent one however please keep in mind that on certain repositories performance can be quite bad at times.

      • Dan Dineen

        Thanks for the suggestion Ben. I find SourceTree a bit clunky to be honest – it could do with some serious UX/UI love! I guess that using another GUI just for the rebases defeats the whole point of a great Git tool. Squashing and tidying up commits seems like an important part of the process and the first tool to offer this functionality may well clean up :-)

  • vadviktor

    To be very honest, I am still waiting until GitKraken can beat SmartGit, then I consider a change :) SmartGit currently does everything and MORE I could wish for for my team. The only last thing I really miss is a GUI for interactive rebase, but that’s just an extra.

  • Andrew

    Looks like a very interesting project! Love the design. I noticed in your Working on NodeGit blog post (2015/04/09) you were thinking about using nw.js, what made you go with electron instead?

  • Johan

    Hi!
    Is there anyway I can leave information on problems that I have? I’m testing GitKraken in our company, but two of our git repositories cannot be cloned due of issues/error messages and time outs.

    • James

      There is the ability to leave feedback including issues or requests under the Help menu option on the client.

      • Johan

        Yes, I know. But I would like to attach a screenshot but one cannot do that thru that form. But now I see there is an email as well. I don’t know if it was there before as I have 0.5 now.
        Thanks anyway!

  • disqus_OgCWv150NB

    I finally am able to actually install it, and it won’t register :(

  • SalahAdDinYusuf

    Looks awesome, i want it.

  • Steve Lambe

    Hey there, I really like the look and feel but I’ve found there are a number of things I cannot seem to find answers to. Who or what would be a good email address to send question to? I’ve sent in 2 from the “send feedback” but I don’t know if they’ve been looked at and as of right now the issues I’ve run into are making it impossible for me to do anything with my repos in GitKraken. Let me know,

    Steve

  • Andrew

    Can GitKraken work through an SSH connection to a git on a remote machine? I want to run the GUI locally (on my Windows laptop) but I do not want the repository to be local on my Windows laptop for a variety of reasons. I’m looking for a GUI that will put a better face on git, but not force me to run the GUI on the remote machine (high latency connection).

  • sherrie g

    Getting ready to dive into it now. Gotta say: one of the best brand names + logos EVER.