{"id":25875,"date":"2016-11-28T12:21:55","date_gmt":"2016-11-28T20:21:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/visualstudioalm\/?p=25875"},"modified":"2019-02-14T15:56:01","modified_gmt":"2019-02-14T23:56:01","slug":"getting-the-most-out-of-git","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/devops\/getting-the-most-out-of-git\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting the most out of Git"},"content":{"rendered":"

Posted on behalf of guest blogger:\u00a0Tobias G\u00fcnther, CEO Fournova<\/a>\u00a0.\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/strong>Git Tower and Team Services<\/a> together provide an awesome\u00a0Git solution for your team, on Mac and (now!) Windows.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014<\/p>\n

In the last few years, millions of developers have started to use Git. But just a fraction of them are using it confidently and productively: Git’s large feature set and its even larger number of parameters and flags make it hard to master.<\/p>\n

The question, therefore, is not<\/em> if you are using<\/em>\u00a0Git in your team. The question is if it helps you become a more professional and productive developer.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Making Git Easier to Use<\/strong><\/p>\n

We faced this question in our own team, too, and decided on a rather radical solution: we developed Tower<\/a>, a desktop GUI that makes Git easier – for us and over 80,000 customers like Google, Amazon, Salesforce and IBM. After being a Mac-only application for the last 7 years, it is now finally available on Windows<\/a>, too.<\/p>\n

We were eager to make our lives easier and not surrender in the face of Git’s steep learning curve. Let’s look at a couple of situations that we found particularly frustrating – and how we tackled them in Tower.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Managing Remote Repositories<\/strong><\/p>\n

A particularly tedious part of developers’ everyday work is repository management: you can spend hours<\/em>\u00a0fiddling with remote URLs, passwords, usernames, and authentication tokens. After connecting e.g. your Visual Studio Team Services<\/em>\u00a0or Team Foundation Server<\/em> account in Tower’s “Services Manager”, cloning and creating repositories become a matter of a single click!<\/p>\n

\"Git<\/a><\/p>\n

Undo & Conflict Wizard<\/strong><\/p>\n

The possibility to undo mistakes is one of Git’s greatest advantages. However, knowing all the commands and parameters to be able to use<\/em>\u00a0these undo functions is quite a different story. Tower makes these helpful features easily accessible through a well-designed UI.<\/p>\n

For example when a merge conflict occurs, Tower helps you understand and solve it by presenting it in a visual<\/em> way, via its unique “Conflict Wizard” interface.<\/p>\n

\"Git<\/a><\/p>\n

Usability & Workflows<\/strong><\/p>\n

Since our main goal is to make our users more productive<\/strong>, many usability and workflow improvements found their way into Tower:<\/p>\n