GitFiend: A Git client designed for humans

Git is an important tool in application development. While it can be easy to use, having a graphical client to facilitate the process is never a bad thing. So, today you will meet GitFiend which is a Git client designed to be easy to use.

According to the GitFiend website.

GitFiend is a Git client designed for humans

From this, you can deduce that, it is simple to use and with basic features that will cover most of the users’ needs.

With GitFiend you can clone, init, fetch, auto-fetch, push, pull, stage and commit. In addition to seeing the status of the repositories and other basic features.

Some more advanced features are:

• Support for undo
• Quickly search through history for code, commits, messages, users, and branches
• Preview feature
• Tag support

And many more.

Of course, GitFiend is open source. Although it is primarily intended for Linux, it also has versions for Windows and macOS.

Install GitFiend on Linux

GitFiend support for Linux is good because it provides different methods and formats to perform the process.

Install GitFiend on Debian, Ubuntu and derivatives

For the specific case of Debian and all its derivatives, GitFiend is distributed as DEB packages. So, you can go to the download site within the website and proceed to download it.

Then, open your file browser and proceed to double-click on it to start the whole installation process.

In case you want an installation via terminal then open one, then with the wget command download the latest stable version

wget https://gitfiend.com/resources/GitFiend_0.39.4_amd64.deb

Then, install it

sudo apt install ./GitFiend_0.39.4_amd64.deb

Thereafter, you can run it from the main menu.

Gitfiend on RHEL, derivatives and Fedora

For the RHEL family, there is also an RPM package that you can quickly install thanks to DNF.

So, open a terminal and run

sudo rpm -i https://gitfiend.com/resources/GitFiend-0.39.4.x86_64.rpm

As you can see, the process is even easier than on Debian based distributions.

Installing Git client on any Linux distribution

For all other Linux distributions out there, there is an AppImage option. This format works similar to a portable on Windows, with the advantage of being self-contained and isolated from the system.

The installation process is summarized by downloading it and simply running it. To achieve this, you can download it from the GitFiend download site and choose the AppImage format.

Now you need to set execution permissions on the file. Normally, you already have them, but it is better to be certain.

Right-click on the file and go to properties. Then in the Permissions tab, check the Allow executing file as program option.

To run it, just double-click on the file.

In case you want to do it via terminal, you can open one and use wget for the download.

wget https://gitfiend.com/resources/GitFiend-0.39.4.AppImage

Then, run it

chmod +x GitFiend-0.39.4.AppImage
./GitFiend-0.39.4.AppImage

It should be working by now.

This method is recommended if you would like to take it with you everywhere or if you want to remove it easily.

GitFiend: A Git client designed for humans

One of the requirements for the application to work is obviously Git. So, you have to install it first.

As soon as you open the application you will notice that there are three buttons Create, Open, and Clone where you can add a repository as appropriate.

In case you are going to create one, then, click on Create and you will be prompted for the folder name and path.

Just like that, the tool will create a local repository.

One of the features that matter a lot in this tool is its ability to support dark themes.

Then, you can continue to use it for commits or pulls as required.

Uninstall GitFiend from the system

The process of uninstalling GitFiend is pretty straightforward as well. For Debian family distributions, you can run.

sudo apt remove gitfiend

For RHEL and derivatives

sudo dnf remove gitfiend

But in the case of AppImage, just remove the file.

rm GitFiend-0.39.4.AppImage

This way, you will have removed the application from the system, saving several megabytes of space.

Conclusion

GitFiend is a GIT client intended for users who want to use GIT without complications. This tool is easy to use and install, as you have seen in this post.