GitChrono

A fast, native Git client — 100% Rust, GPU-rendered with gpui. Website and downloads: gitchrono.com.

[!WARNING] GitChrono is in alpha. Use at your own risk. Expect bugs and breaking changes. It runs real git commands (reset, rebase, discard, force-push) on your repositories, so keep backups or a pushed remote of anything you can't afford to lose.

cargo run -p gitchrono-app -- /path/to/repo     # or open one from the welcome screen

Requires git 2.40+ on PATH (Windows builds include MinGit as a fallback; without git the app shows how to install it).

Architecture

crates/
  gitchrono-core/   git engine — reads via gitoxide, writes via the git CLI
  gitchrono-graph/  pure commit-graph lane layout (unit tested)
  gitchrono-app/    gpui desktop app (gpui-kit + gpui-component)

Hybrid engine. History walk (--topo-order), refs and commit trees come from gitoxide — that's what keeps 85k-commit repos fast. Everything that mutates the repo (commit, push, rebase, stash, …) and porcelain-exact reads (status, patches) shell out to git, so hooks, credential helpers, SSH config and signing behave exactly like the terminal. As gix grows (push/rebase are still missing upstream) more can move in-process.

Benchmark: cargo run --release -p gitchrono-core --example snapshot -- <repo> (git.git: 85,767 commits loaded in ~2.8s, graph layout ~80ms, Apple Silicon).

Debug hooks. GITCHRONO_SETTINGS=1 opens the settings page on launch; GITCHRONO_FOLDERS=1 starts file lists in folder view. GITCHRONO_SELECT=<row>[:diff] selects a row (and opens its first diff) after the first load and GITCHRONO_TERMINAL=<command> runs a command in the terminal — used by scripts/screenshots.sh.

Releases

Builds run on GitHub Actions:

• CI (.github/workflows/ci.yml) — tests + app build on macOS, Linux and Windows for every push/PR.
• Release (.github/workflows/release.yml) — on a v* tag, builds and publishes a GitHub Release: macOS universal .dmg, Windows x64 .zip, Linux x64/arm64 .tar.gz, plus SHA256SUMS.txt. The version comes from the tag; -suffix tags are marked pre-release. Run it manually (workflow_dispatch) or push a release/** branch to get -dev.N artifacts without publishing.
• Screenshots (.github/workflows/screenshots.yml) — on a v* tag (or manually), takes the screenshots above on macOS with scripts/screenshots.sh and commits them to docs/screenshots/ when they changed. Run the script locally to preview them (it needs Screen Recording permission).

scripts/release.sh 0.2.0 --push   # bump Cargo version, commit, tag v0.2.0, push → release

macOS builds are ad-hoc signed; Gatekeeper will warn until Developer ID signing + notarization secrets are added. Windows builds are unsigned.

Licensing (open-core)

The crates in this repository are Apache-2.0. Paid Pro features (hosted integrations, team features, AI) will live in a separate crate outside this repo.

See docs/roadmap.md for the roadmap.