jonas/tig

Tig is a terminal program for browsing Git repositories using a text-based, keyboard-driven interface. Rather than running git log, git diff, and git show as separate commands and reading pages of flat text output, Tig puts the same information into an interactive split-pane layout that you navigate with the arrow keys. The main view shows commits in reverse chronological order. Pressing enter on any commit opens a pane below with the diff for that commit. You can move between commits, inspect which files changed, and read the file blame view, which shows who wrote each line of a file and which commit introduced it. Navigating between branches is also possible from within the same interface. Tig also helps prepare commits. It displays unstaged changes in the same pane layout and lets you select and stage or unstage individual diff chunks, similar to what git add -p does interactively but with a persistent visual layout. It can also function as a pager for the output of other git commands, meaning you can pipe git output into Tig and navigate the result interactively with the keyboard. Installation is straightforward. On Debian or Ubuntu, apt install tig works. On macOS, brew install tig is the common approach. The source is written in C and uses the ncurses library, which has been a standard part of Unix-like systems for decades. The program runs in any terminal emulator without needing a graphical desktop. The project works on Linux and macOS, and has been tested on Windows through Wine. A separate manual covers the full keyboard shortcuts and configuration options. Bug reports are accepted through the GitHub issue tracker or through the Git mailing list.