git-cola: The highly caffeinated Git GUI
Git Cola is a powerful Git GUI with a slick and intuitive user interface.
git clone https://github.com/git-cola/git-cola.git
Documentation
Requirements
Build
- Sphinx is used to generate the documentation.
Runtime
Git Cola uses QtPy, so you can choose between PyQt6, PyQt5 and PySide2 by setting
the QT_API environment variable to pyqt6, pyqt5 or pyside2 as desired.
qtpy defaults to pyqt5 and falls back to pyqt6 and pyside2 if pyqt5
is not installed.
Any of the following Python Qt libraries must be installed:
-
PyQt5 / PyQt6 5.6 or newer is required. Qt 6.0 is also supported via QtPy.
-
PySide2 5.11.0 or newer.
Optional Features
Git Cola enables additional features when the following Python modules are installed.
Send2Trash enables cross-platform "Send to Trash" functionality. (source)
pyobjc enables macOS-specific application themes on macOS. (source)
Installation
IMPORTANT: never run pip install or garden install outside of a
Python virtualenv or as root!
There are several ways to install Git Cola.
Linux
Linux is it! Your distro has probably already packaged git-cola.
If not, please file a bug against your distribution ;-)
Arch
Available in the AUR.
Debian, Ubuntu
apt install git-cola
Fedora
dnf install git-cola
Gentoo
emerge git-cola
OpenSUSE, SLE
zypper install git-cola
Slackware
Available in SlackBuilds.org.
Ubuntu
See here for the versions that are available in Ubuntu's repositories.
There was a PPA by @pavreh but it has not been updated for a while.
FreeBSD
# Install from official binary packages
pkg install -r FreeBSD devel/git-cola
# Build from source
cd /usr/ports/devel/git-cola && make clean install
Install into a Python Virtualenv from PyPI using pip
IMPORTANT: never run pip install or garden install outside of a
Python virtualenv or as root!
One way to install the latest released version is to use venv (virtualenv) and pip.
This installs git-cola from pypi.org.
If you already have PyQt5 installed from your distribution's package manager
then you should skip the pip install PyQt steps.
If you already have the qt5-devel package installed then you can lookup its version so
that your virtualenv can install a compatible version of PyQt using qmake:
QT_VERSION=$(qmake -query QT_VERSION)
QT_VERSION_MAJOR=$(qmake -query QT_VERSION | head -c 1)
echo PyQt${QT_VERSION_MAJOR}==${QT_VERSION}
Take note of the PyQtX==A.B.C value so that you can specify it when installing
PyQt below if, and only if, you have qmake installed and want to interoperate
with its corresponding Qt installation.
python3 -m venv --system-site-packages env3
# Skip this command if you already have PyQt installed or if you do not have qmake
./env3/bin/pip install PyQt${QT_VERSION_MAJOR}==${QT_VERSION}
./env3/bin/pip install git-cola
./env3/bin/git-cola
Add the env3/bin directory to your PATH or symlink to bin/git-cola from
somewhere in your PATH such as ~/.local/bin/git-cola, and you can launch
Git Cola like any other built-in git command:
git cola
git dag
Install into a Python Virtualenv from Source
If you don't have PyQt installed then the easiest way to get it is to use a Python
virtualenv and install Git Cola into it in "editable" mode. This install method
lets you upgrade Git Cola by running git pull.
# Create a virtualenv called "env3" and activate it.
python3 -m venv --system-site-packages env3
source env3/bin/activate
# One-time setup: install dev and optional runtime requirements
garden requirements/dev
garden requirements/opt
# Install git-cola in "editable" mode so that it uses the source tree.
garden develop
# Run Git Cola via the "git-cola" Git subcommand.
git cola
If you add env3/bin (or symlink to bin/git-cola ) to your $PATH then you can
run git cola as if it were a builtin git command from outside of the virtualenv
(eg. after running "deactivate" or when opening a new shell).
Standalone Installation from Source
Running garden -D prefix=$HOME/.local install will install Git Cola in your
$HOME/.local directory ($HOME/.local/bin/git-cola, $HOME/.local/lib, etc).
This installation method assumes that the qtpy and PyQt* dependencies have
been pre-installed.
The Garden recipe also supports DESTDIR to support creating packages for Linux package
managers:
garden -D DESTDIR=/tmp/stage -D prefix=/usr/local install
If you do not have garden available then make can be used instead.
The Makefile supports staged installs using the conventional
DESTDIR and
prefix
variables.
make DESTDIR=/tmp/stage prefix=/usr/local install
macOS
For most end-users we recommend using either Homebrew or installing into a Python virtualenv as described above.
You can install Git Cola from source using the same steps as above.
Homebrew
An easy way to install Git Cola is to use Homebrew . Use Homebrew to install the git-cola recipe:
brew install git-cola
If you install using Homebrew you can stop at this step. You don't need to clone the repo or anything.
git-cola.app
If you have all of the dependencies installed, either via pip or brew then
you can build a shell git-cola.app app bundle wrapper for use in /Applications.
If you'd like to build a git-cola.app bundle for /Applications run this command:
garden macos/app
You will need to periodically rebuild the app wrapper whenever Python is upgraded.
Updating macOS and Homebrew
Updating macOS can often break Homebrew-managed software.
If you upgrade your macOS version and Git Cola no longer runs then then it is recommended that you re-install Git Cola's dependencies after upgrading.
A quick fix when upgrading to newer versions of XCode or macOS is to reinstall pyqt5.
brew reinstall pyqt@5
You may also need to relink your pyqt installation:
brew link pyqt@5
This is required when upgrading to a modern (post-10.11 El Capitan) Mac OS X. Homebrew now bundles its own Python3 installation instead of using the system-provided default Python.
If the "brew reinstall" command above does not work then re-installing from scratch using the instructions below should get things back in shape.
# update homebrew
brew update
# uninstall git-cola and its dependencies
brew uninstall git-cola
brew uninstall pyqt5
brew uninstall sip
# re-install git-cola and its dependencies
brew install git-cola
Windows
IMPORTANT If you have a 64-bit machine, install the 64-bit versions only. Do not mix 32-bit and 64-bit versions.
Download and install the following:
Once these are installed you can run Git Cola from the Start menu.
See "Windows (Continued)" below for more details.
If you'd like to install Git Cola with winget run the following command:
winget install git-cola.git-cola
As there is no dependency resolution yet you have to install Git as well with:
winget install Git.Git
Goodies
Git Cola ships with an interactive rebase editor called git-cola-sequence-editor.
git-cola-sequence-editor is used to reorder and choose commits when rebasing.
Start an interactive rebase through the "Rebase" menu, or through the
git cola rebase sub-command to use the git-cola-sequence-editor:
git cola rebase @{upstream}
git-cola-sequence-editor can be launched independently of git cola by telling
git rebase to use it as its editor through the GIT_SEQUENCE_EDITOR
environment variable:
export GIT_SEQUENCE_EDITOR="$HOME/git-cola/bin/git-cola-sequence-editor"
git rebase -i @{upstream}
Shell Completions
Shell completion scripts are available for bash and zsh. Each script contains instructions on how to install and activate the completions.
Git Cola Sub-commands
The git-cola command exposes various sub-commands that allow you to quickly
launch tools that are available from within the git-cola interface.
For example, git cola find launches the file finder,
and git cola grep launches the grep tool.
See git cola --help-commands for the full list of commands.
$ git cola --help-commands
usage: git-cola [-h]
{cola,am,archive,branch,browse,config,
dag,diff,fetch,find,grep,merge,pull,push,
rebase,remote,search,stash,tag,version}
...
valid commands:
{cola,am,archive,branch,browse,config,
dag,diff,fetch,find,grep,merge,pull,push,
rebase,remote,search,stash,tag,version}
cola start git-cola
am apply patches using "git am"
archive save an archive
branch create a branch
browse browse repository
config edit configuration
dag start git-dag
diff view diffs
fetch fetch remotes
find find files
grep grep source
merge merge branches
pull pull remote branches
push push remote branches
rebase interactive rebase
remote edit remotes
search search commits
stash stash and unstash changes
tag create tags
version print the version
Development
If you already have Git Cola's dependencies installed then you can
start cola as a Python module if you have the source code available.
python -m cola
python -m cola dag
The following commands should be run during development:
# Run the unit tests
$ garden test
# Run tests and longer-running pylint checks
$ garden check
# Run tests against multiple python interpreters using tox
$ garden tox
The test suite can be found in the test directory.
Commits and pull requests are automatically tested for code quality using GitHub Actions.
Auto-format cola/i18n/*.po files before committing when updating translations:
$ garden po
When submitting patches, consult the contributing guidelines.
Packaging Notes
Git Cola installs its modules into the default Python site-packages directory
(eg. lib/python3.7/site-packages) using setuptools.
While end-users can use pip install git-cola to install Git Cola, distribution
packagers should use the garden -D prefix=/usr install process. Git Cola's Garden
recipe wraps pip install --prefix=<prefix> to provide a packaging-friendly
garden install target.
Windows (Continued)
Microsoft Visual C++ 2015 Redistributable
Earlier versions of Git Cola may have shipped without vcruntime140.dll and may
not run on machines that are missing this DLL.
To fix this, download the Microsoft Visual C++ 2015 Redistributable and install it
Git Cola v4.0.0 and newer include this DLL and do not require this to be installed separately.
Development
In order to develop Git Cola on Windows you will need to install
Python3 and pip. Install PyQt5 using pip install PyQt5
to make the PyQt5 bindings available to Python.
Once these are installed you can use python.exe to run
directly from the source tree. For example, from a Git Bash terminal:
/c/Python39/python.exe ./bin/git-cola
Multiple Python versions
If you have multiple versions of Python installed, the contrib/win32/cola
launcher script might choose the newer version instead of the python
that has PyQt installed. In order to resolve this, you can set the
cola.pythonlocation git configuration variable to tell cola where to
find python. For example:
git config --global cola.pythonlocation /c/Python39
Building Windows Installers
Windows installers are built using
To build the installer using Pynsist run:
./contrib/win32/run-pynsist.sh
This will generate an installer in build/nsis/.
Windows "History Browser" Configuration Upgrade
You may need to configure your history browser if you are upgrading from an older version of Git Cola on Windows.
gitk was originally the default history browser, but gitk cannot be
launched as-is on Windows because gitk is a shell script.
If you are configured to use gitk, then change your configuration to
go through Git's sh.exe on Windows. Similarly, we must go through
python.exe if we want to use git-dag.
If you want to use gitk as your history browser open the Preferences screen and change the history browser command to:
"C:/Program Files/Git/bin/sh.exe" --login -i C:/Git/bin/gitk
git-dag became the default history browser on Windows in v2.3, so new
users do not need to configure anything.