All things programming and coding related. Subcommunity of Technology.
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I use the VS Code built-in git support for making commits, and fall back to the CLI for anything else.
You won't have trouble remembering commands once you use them often enough. And you don't need to know all of them, just the ones your workflow uses. My toolbox is commit, checkout, status, reset, rebase -i, merge, bisect. That's all I need day-to-day.
Github desktop is very functional, I use it all the time
I've been using the git gui extension for a while and resolve conflicts in vs code. I also just use a lot of cli
I use GitHub Desktop - offered by GitHub themself. Its a GUI application where you can fetch, push, pull etc. But mostly just basic github "commands".
I generally don't trust most git GUIs - a number of our developers have used SourceTree on OS X before and it's led to nothing but issues. The only one I trust is the one built into IntelliJ IDEA, otherwise I'll use commandline.
I don't use a GUI, with the exception of Meld as my primary difftool
At work I wish they were using git. But we got SVN. How I long for the ability to use pull requests. But tortoiseSVN has some nice features (I'm stuck with windows over there) even if it's lacking in overall functionality.
I own sublime merge because it was cheap when I upgraded to ST4, but never use it. It's not bad or anything, but honestly the CLI is more convenient to use (and all the GUIs I've used have a lot of clicking involved). I don't know that you're going to find something better than the CLI, especially given your requirement ow "comfortable to use with only a keyboard".
I don't have a recommendation, but I understand the desire for excellent keyboard support in a GUI. I switched to Linux after 3 decades on Windows and I really miss doing all the screen navigation from the keyboard. In Windows, the only time I used a mouse was inside things like drawing tools and badly written apps with inadequate or non-standard keyboard support.
I used to use GitKraken at my old job and loved it most of the time, slick UI and generally did what you wanted to do.
I'm using Atlassian SourceTree at my current place since it's what they give us and it's...fine. Not as nice as GitKraken.
I mainly use them because I originally used TFS's TFVC when I started my career and when we transitioned to Git, I started out using a GUI so never really learned to use the CLI.
Sourcetree
JetBrains have some quite extensive VC tooling built into their IDEs which I use almost exclusively. I used to do everything in the terminal, but I find it so much quicker and simpler to do it directly in the IDE.
Not really but sometimes if I need a visualization of something complicated that I can't see in my head I'll go to the network tab under insights in github
Git extensions, have been using it for years, and while the UI is not flashy, it gets the job done really really well.
The repository I work in is huge, old, and the folder structures are wide and deep. It is normal to modify tens of files in almost as many folders for a single feature change.
SourceTree for managing staged files and committing.
CLI for pull, branch switching, and searching.
TortoiseGit for showing the log or blame of individual files and folders.
I'm using Gittyup. It is open source, available everywhere, and the ui is quite good.
If you're already comfortable working in the shell, you should check out tig. It's not as fully featured as the other clients named here, but it's an excellent viewer nevertheless.
I use Git Tower and I love it. I'm surprised I don't see it mentioned here.
I kinda do both? For some reason, I prefer the CLI when I clone a repo, but Sourcetree for committing, pulling, and pushing, and my IDE's built in git tools for merges.
Gitkraken is the powerhouse, but i only use it for difficult commands
I use GK for everything and usually only use CLI when there's something a little exotic. I like seeing it update in real time on another screen and I like the diff engine for quickly assessing changes and making sure everything I expected was altered and nothing I didn't. I know there are other tools but GitKraken is the fastest for me.
Also have found it a good tool for teaching other engineers (usually older) how Git works. We tried out Sourcetree but it was super clunky at the time.
If I had to find a tool between pure CLI and pure GUI I'd probably recommend Emacs Magit porcelain. Works quite well.
I used to swear by the git CLI. After using GitKraken for a few days, I shelled out the $95 for an annual license. It's really good.
Tig is a pretty nice terminal gui
Tower on Mac is excellent, tig in terminal is also very powerful once you read the help/man pages!
I use GitHub Desktop for 95% of my git needs, terminal for the other 5%
I am pretty hooked to SmartGit. I absolutely love their branch and commit view and haven't found another tool that visualizes the tree quite as good (for my taste; I assume it has to do with familiarization over time).
I did however buy a lifetime license when they still offered them. Their current pricing model would have probably turned me off before I even got hooked. It is absolutely worth a look though.
I have some git blame extention in VSCode, but otherwise no. Something about using gui tool for git makes me feel so disconnected from it, like I'm not entirely sure what's going on, and afraid I'm going to fuck something up
Also, I forget commands all the time. Mostly ones I don't use often, like changing/adding/removing remotes, changing settings, etc.
Would it work for you if you created git aliases for commands you can't remember?
If you have trouble remembering git commands for CLI have a look at the tool tldr:
https://man.archlinux.org/man/tldr.1.en
For example if you need to remember how to use the branch command you could look it up with
tldr git branch
which would give you an overview on the most popular use cases.
And in case you don't already know: You may want to use the history search tool of your shell by hitting CTRL-r and then for example typing branch. You'd get a list of past commands you have used containing branch that you can flip through by repeatedly hitting CTRL-r.