Git Cola is a sleek and powerful graphical user interface (GUI) designed to simplify Git operations such as committing, branching, merging, rebasing, and more. It provides an intuitive and modern interface for developers to interact with Git repositories.
Key Features:
Cross-platform support for Linux, macOS, and Windows.
Extensive Git operation integration, including advanced features like rebase, cherry-pick, and stash management.
Terminal access directly within the application for quick command execution.
Keyboard shortcuts for efficient navigation and workflow acceleration.
Customizable interface with support for various Qt-based frameworks (PyQt5, PyQt6, PySide2) via QtPy.
Audience & Benefit:
Ideal for developers who use Git regularly but prefer a visual, user-friendly approach to repository management. Git Cola streamlines workflows by offering a centralized tool that enhances productivity and reduces the complexity of common Git tasks.
README
git-cola: The highly caffeinated Git GUI
Git Cola is a powerful Git GUI with a slick and intuitive user interface.
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.
Git Cola enables additional features when the following
Python modules are installed.
Send2Trash
enables cross-platform "Send to Trash" functionality.
(source)
notify2
enables delivery of desktop notifications.
(source)
pyobjc
enables macOS-specific application themes on macOS.
(source)
Installation
There are several ways to install Git Cola but you do not need to "install" Git Cola
in order to run it.
Git Cola is designed to run directly from its source tree. Installation is optional.
From Source
The recommended approach for running the latest Git Cola version is to install its
PyQt dependencies using your distribution's package manager and then run
./bin/git-cola directly from source.
Installing PyQt dependencies on Debian / Ubuntu systems
Git Cola works with either PyQt5 or PyQt6 because it uses the
qtpy library for PyQt compatibility.
PyQt5
Users on newer Debian/Ubuntu version can install a single package to run from source.
sudo apt install python3-qtpy
If you are on an older version that does not have python3-qtpy available then you can
install the following packages directly.
See here for the
versions that are available in Ubuntu's repositories.
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!
IMPORTANT: if you are on Linux distributions where PyQt6 or PyQt5 are available from
your package manager then it is highly recommended to install those dependencies using
your system's package manager. See the section above for details.
One way to install the latest released version is to use venv (virtualenv) and pip.
This installs git-cola from pypi.org.
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
# Install PyQt and (optional) extra packages to enable all features.
./env3/bin/pip install --editable '.[extras,pyqt6]'
# Run Git Cola via the "git-cola" Git subcommand.
source env3/bin/activate
git cola
If you add env3/bin (or symlink to env3/bin/git-cola ) somewhere in your $PATH then you can
run git cola as if it were a builtin git command from outside of the virtualenv
(e.g. after running "deactivate" or when opening a new shell).
Standalone Installation from Source
Running garden -D prefix=$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:
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 update macOS and Git Cola stops working then then you probably need to re-install
Git Cola's dependencies.
Re-installing from scratch using the instructions below can get things back in shape.
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.
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 doc 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:
Git Cola installs its modules into the default Python site-packages directory
(e.g. lib/pythonX.Y/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= 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.
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:
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:
