Source control is quintessential to a productive development environment. A well maintained and organized source control system is akin to having known-good database backups. Having the right tools to interface with source control is just as important!
Recently I took on the challenge of writing about hairballs in our coding environment. One of the best methods to help nibble away at hairballs is to have an organized source control in place.
An effective and efficient source control system that is well organized can help locate offending related code fairly easily. To help improve your efficiency one needs to have a good solid tool. The right tool for the job makes a world of difference.
In this article, I will share my preferred tool. I have used Visual Studio, TortoiseSVN, GitKraken and some others. Each has its pros and cons. For me, overall, the easiest to use for my various integrations is GitKraken. I hope to share some of the features that make this tool my daily source control weapon.
Source Control and GitKraken
At the top of my list for features that make GitKraken a power tool is the ease of use. I find it to many times easier to clone a repo than other tools. This may seem trivial, but I have wasted too many minutes in other tools trying to get a repo to clone properly. In GitKraken, it just works and works very easily and efficiently.
Not only is it easy to clone a repo, there are several repo types that are supported. Take a look at the following image to get a quick view of the different types of repos supported.
I frequently use Azure DevOps, Bitbucket and Github repos. All are easy to clone and use on a routine basis through GitKraken. This is a huge timesaver for me as I bounce between my personal repos as well as client repos.
The power of Gitkraken over source control doesn’t end at connectivity to different repo types. Oh no! Gitkraken also provides a very easy to use method for check-in. It is very easy to see everything that has changed locally that is ready to be committed. Check this out.
Easy Commit to Source via GitKraken
In the image to the right, you can see the files that GitKraken has detected are different from those in your source control repo. Gitkraken makes it very easy to see what needs to be done to move files from changed, to staged, to committed.
In the red highlight, you can see the hierarchy of the changes in the project. Moving through the tree, you can just click a button to stage specific files.
Once staged, the file(s) will appear in the middle section highlighted by green. There is nothing to do here except remove unwanted files that were accidentally staged.
Next, in order to commit the staged files, you must enter a message as noted by the button circled in yellow. Once you enter a message, all you need to do is click the big green button.
As you can see, Gitkraken makes interacting with source control incredibly easy. This just scratches the surface of GitKrakens power. Other features include the ability to integrate with Trello or directly with GitKrakens own Kanban boards. Other power features include Workspaces which help to group different projects together for easier visibility.
Put a bow on it
This was a quick and concise introduction to the power of GitKraken. GitKraken gives you power to be more efficient with your source control.
As we know, source control is the lifeblood in todays IT infrastructure. Being able to quickly and efficiently manage your code interactions with source control is essential. GitKraken provides this essential power for the end user. Personally, I have found it to be far more user-friendly and efficient than many of the other viable alternatives.
Give GitKraken a trial run – especially if you are not using any source control at all. If you aren’t using source control, WHY? Source control has helped save my bacon multiple times and I know I am not alone in that. Guess what I have used to save my bacon. You got it – GitKraken.
Interested in learning more deep technical information? Check these out!
Want to learn more about your indexes? Try this index maintenance article or this index size article.
This is the ninth article in the 2021 “12 Days of Christmas” series. For the full list of articles, please visit this page.
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