Gitless is an experimental version control system built on top of Git. Many people complain that Git is hard to use. We think the problem lies deeper than the user interface, in the concepts underlying Git. Gitless is an experiment to see what happens if you put a simple veneer on an app that changes the underlying concepts. Because Gitless is implemented on top of Git (could be considered what Git pros call a "porcelain" of Git), you can always fall back on Git. And of course your coworkers you share a repository with need never know that you're not a Git aficionado.

Note that the installation won't interfere with your Git installation in any way, you can keep using Git, and switch between Git and Gitless seamlessly.

We currently require Git (1.7.12+) to be installed (but this requirement is going to disappear soon once we finish with our migration to pygit2).

Binary releases for macOS and Linux are available from the Gitless website.

If you've downloaded a binary release of Gitless everything is contained in the gl binary, so to install simply do:

$ cp path-to-downloaded-gl-binary /usr/local/bin/gl

You can put the binary in other locations as well, just be sure to update your PATH.

If for some reason this doesn't work (maybe you are running an old version of your OS?), try one of the other options (installing from source or via the Python Package Index).

To install from source you need to have Python (2.7, 3.2+ or PyPy) installed.

Note to Windows users: Python 3 is not supported yet, see #146 for more info.

Additionally, you need to install pygit2.

Then, download the source code tarball and do:

$ ./setup.py install

If you are a Python fan you might find it easier to install Gitless via the Python Package Index. To do this, you need to have Python (2.7, 3.2+ or PyPy) installed.

Note to Windows users: Python 3 is not supported yet, see #146 for more info.

Additionally, you need to install pygit2.

Then, just do:

$ pip install gitless

If you are using Homebrew, a package manager for macOS, you can install Gitless with:

brew update
brew install gitless

gl -h, gl subcmd -h or check our documentation

There are several ways you can contribute to the project:

• Bugs: did you find a bug? create an issue for it and we'll fix it ASAP
• Code: you can browse through the open issues and see if there's something there you would like to work on. Is something missing? feel free to propose it!
• Design: if you have any feedback about Gitless's design we would love to hear from you. You can create an issue in the project with your feedback/questions/suggestions or shoot us an email

If you're planning on submitting code here are some useful things to know:

• We follow (to some extent) the Google Python Style Guide. Before submitting code, take a few seconds to look at the style guide and the Gitless's code so that your edits are consistent with the codebase

• Finally, if you don't want Travis to be mad at you, check that tests pass in Python 2.7 and 3.2+. Tests can be run with

  pip install nose
  nosetests # run tests other than end-to-end tests
  nosetests ./gitless/tests/test_e2e.py # run end-to-end tests