Has anyone used tower and sourcetree and can compare them both? I am just about fed up with sourcetree and ready to switch to a not-terrible alternative.
I've only used Sourcetree briefly, a couple years back when I was deciding between GUI frontends to Git. I compared Tower, Sourcetree, Github Desktop, and maybe one or two others.
Tower was the clear winner then and Tower 2 has only improved on it.
I was, and in many ways still am, a Git novice. Like many, I only did the basic commands in order to work with my team. But Tower has helped me become a (somewhat) better branch strategist, in some cases even enabling me to recommend to my more senior colleagues ways to fix problems with branches.
The reason I have been able to more meaningfully contribute is because Tower, like many GUIs, makes things discoverable. So while the command-line equivalents are hidden from view, the sequence and logic of working with different branches is exposed by the spatial metaphors that inhere in the GUI.
As a final plug, the Tree view that Tower provides continues to help me gain insight about how my work and the work of my colleagues integrates into our product's main branch.
I'm not associated with Tower except as a very satisfied user. It's not perfect, and there are some things I wish it did better. But the product is under active development and the product is rock solid.
Git Extensions has certain shortcomings (search doesn't work that great, deleting branches is clunky etc.), but its competitors - on Windows at least - are even worse, I agree.
Besides, Git Extensions is written in C# and open-source... once I finally have some time on my hands (read: never), I'd gladly add some simple features that I'm missing in it
I really like Git Extensions commit screen, the best from the git GUIs I've used.
It has great shortcuts to stage/unstage/reset and you can even separate lines to be commited.
I use Tower on Mac daily. I initially recommended SourceTree for the Windows users in my team (they were all new to Git) but after using it with one of them I rescinded that recommendation. It is awful.
If Tower for Windows is anything like its Mac counterpart I would recommend it head-and-shoulders over anything else. Well worth the price!
I use both SourceTree and Tower on OS X and Windows.
While I can say that on OS X, both work better than their counterpart on Windows, Tower is still my go to client. I think the biggest thing is that when I started with Tower, things just clicked. On top of that, with Tower, I has never dealt with bugs or any issues (besides the windows beta installer).
SourceTree on Windows is pretty much worthless. It won't handle large repos well and large changes cause it to lock up and crash when trying to stage files. If you don't like Tower, I would recommend ungit[1] for Windows.
