May 2023 Summaries

GitKraken Client is a cross-platform Git graphical interface for Windows, macOS, and Linux designed to simplify repository management for developers using GitHub and other hosting services. Its visual commit graph helps users understand branches, commits, and merges, while its built-in merge conflict editor presents conflicting versions side by side to support safer resolutions. GitHub integration enables authentication, SSH key generation, cloning, forking, remote management, issue comments, and pull request creation without leaving the application, including support for multiple GitHub accounts. The client also streamlines operations such as pulling, pushing, cherry-picking, merging, and rebasing through an accessible interface, and its configurable diff viewer provides syntax highlighting, word-level comparisons, file navigation, and several display modes. Together, GitKraken Client and GitHub aim to reduce context switching, improve collaboration, and make both routine and complex Git workflows easier to manage.

GitKraken announces that it has been certified as a Great Place to Work following an April employee survey covering onboarding, career development, leadership, culture, and workplace norms, in which 98% of respondents said it was an excellent workplace. The company attributes the result to its team’s supportive, creative, collaborative, and humorous culture, as well as initiatives such as mentorship, knowledge sharing, and resources for employees to guide their own career paths. GitKraken thanks its employees for their contributions and invites prospective candidates interested in an innovative and collaborative software-development workplace to explore its open positions.

Jira Server’s end of support after February 2024 is prompting organizations to move to Jira Cloud, and migrating Git Integration for Jira requires recreating integrations rather than using an automated migration tool. Organizations should first migrate Jira users and projects while preserving project and issue keys, since changes can disrupt links between Jira issues and Git activity. After installing the Cloud app, administrators can add each integration through the Manage Integrations screen, selecting the appropriate cloud or self-hosted Git provider and its authentication method. Git history will automatically restore associations for commits, branches, and pull or merge requests after indexing, while manually created commit associations may require support assistance using the IssueCommitChanges.txt file from the existing Jira installation. The Cloud version also offers potentially expanded options such as OAuth authentication and webhook-based indexing, depending on the Git provider.

GitKraken Client provides extensive customization options through its Preferences menu, accessible from the toolbar, command palette, or settings icon. Users can select built-in themes or create custom JSON-based themes, while Pro users can use Profiles to switch between separate sets of integrations, UI preferences, repositories, GPG settings, and general configurations for contexts such as work and personal projects. Repository-specific settings include issue tracker integrations that surface tasks from services such as GitHub Issues or Jira, and commit templates that automatically insert recurring information into commit messages. General settings allow users to configure external editors, diff and merge tools, terminals, and auto-fetch intervals, while Experimental Features offer early access to capabilities such as using the Git executable instead of NodeGit for improved performance and AI-generated commit messages.

GitKraken Client 9.4 introduces an Experimental Features section in Preferences, allowing users to test optional in-development capabilities and provide feedback that may influence whether they become permanent features. Initial experiments include Git Executable, which uses the installed Git executable rather than the NodeGit library for selected actions such as fetching and committing to improve speed and expand Git support, and AI Commit Message generation, which can use a user-provided OpenAI key and customizable prompt to summarize changes for commits. The release also improves Azure DevOps Cloud Workspaces by letting users choose individual repositories within or across projects rather than synchronizing every repository, and it refreshes onboarding for new users.