Gitk: A “git log” GUI Utility
In this YouTube video, the author mentions the Gitk GUI utility for GitHub, which I find interesting. Here, I will describe how to install it on Ubuntu and briefly look at its usage.
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| Gitk: A “git log” GUI Utility |
The Gitk GUI is free of charge. I spent some time looking for it on the internet, but I was unable to find its official home page. I installed it on Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS (Noble Numbat) with the following command:
$ sudo apt install gitk
On the Ubuntu machine, navigate to a local directory where there is a valid .git sub-directory. For example, /home/behai/fastapi_learning, which is the working directory of the Python FastAPI learning series. Then launch Gitk with the following command:
$ gitk
You will be greeted with the screen shown in the screenshot below:
Please refer to the last post of this Python FastAPI learning series. The last tag is v0.13.0, which is shown in the first entry of the above screenshot. In the Complete GitHub check-in commands section, the README.md file is the last file that was checked in, and it is shown first. The second entry is illustrated in the screenshot below:
The Gitk application displays checked-in files in reverse order. Changes are shown in the bottom left pane of the screen, as illustrated in the screenshot below:
The above screenshot shows two additions to the file. Removed text would be shown in red.
Note that running:
$ git log
from the same directory /home/behai/fastapi_learning results in similar outputs as shown in the above screenshots. However, it seems that the file names are not readily available.
I’m not sure if there is a Windows version of Gitk available. I couldn’t find it. I have some other Windows utilities installed, such as Git Bash and Git GUI, but I don’t find them very useful. This site lists other GitHub-related GUI applications, some of which are paid and some are free.
Thank you for reading. I hope you find the information in this post useful. Stay safe, as always.
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Feature image source: