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

• Screenshots

• Downloads

Documentation

• Keyboard shortcuts

• HTML documentation

• Git Cola documentation

• Git DAG documentation

• Contributing guidelines

Requirements

Build

• Sphinx is used to generate the documentation.

Runtime

• Git 2.2.0 or newer.

• Python 3.6 or newer.

• QtPy 2.0.0 or newer.

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 5.9 or newer is required. Qt 6.2 or newer is also supported via QtPy.

• PySide2 5.12.0 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

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.

sudo apt install python3-pyqt5 python3-pyqt5.qtopengl python3-pyqt5.qtwebengine python3-pyqt5.qtsvg

PyQt6

If you'd like to use Git Cola with the newer PyQt6 ecosystem then you can install these packages instead of PyQt5.

sudo apt install python3-pyqt6 python3-pyqt6.qtsvg python3-pyqt6.qtwebengine

At this point you should be able to launch ./bin/git-cola from the source tree and there is nothing more to do.

The further instructions below detail how to install Git Cola from PyPI or how to install it into a location separate from the source tree.

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.

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.

python3 -m venv --system-site-packages env3
./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

# 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:

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 PyQt6.

brew reinstall pyqt@6

You may also need to relink your pyqt installation:

brew link pyqt@6

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:

• Git for Windows

• Git Cola

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.

• bash completion script

• zsh completion script

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 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:

$ garden po

When submitting patches, consult the contributing guidelines.

Packaging Notes

Git Cola installs its modules into the default Python site-packages directory (e.g. 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

• Pynsist.

• NSIS is also needed.

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.