The Git Extensions git client is actually pretty powerful and has a lot more features than I thought. I’d seen others using it before but never looked into it until I saw a StackOverflow answer suggesting to use Git Extensions to view the git reflog… a feature I’ve only ever seen in Smartgit.
Some nice features I noticed while playing with it for a bit:
- View commits from the reflog in the log view (makes it really easy to recover commits)
- Option to view First Parent only in the log view
- Stage individual lines
- Option to launch external editor for commit message
- The commit message window can autocomplete file names
- Show/Filter any number of branches in the log view
- Windows file explorer integration
- Completely free and open-source and cross-platform
I think I still prefer Smartgit over Git Extensions but it’s tough to recommend Smartgit since it requires a license for Commercial use so I’m always keeping an eye out for good free options to recommend to others and now Git Extensions is my new recommendation (much better than SourceTree).