On December 12th, Frank Li released TortoiseGit 0.1. When we downloaded this initial release at work, we were underwhelmed:

git logOK, but not as good as gitk
git commitBroken

On January 4th, however, Frank Li released TortoiseGit 0.2. He’d been extremely busy:

git logOK, but not as good as gitk
git commitOK (except for add and rm)
git addBroken (see Bug 6 for workaround)
git rmBroken
git statusOK
git pullOK
git pushOK
SSHOK (tested with PuTTY)
git cloneAlways clones to home directory (see Bug 8)
Clean mergeOK
Conflicted mergeManual, as with command-line tool
SubmodulesNo support

Basically, TortoiseGit 0.2 is almost usable, and the project is proceeding at a breakneck pace. If you have Windows users that you want to migrate to Git—and who don’t want to use the command-line tool—it’s worth a look.

Installation instructions follow.

Installing PuTTY (optional)

To use TortoiseGit, you’ll need a working SSH setup. You have two choices:

  1. The command-line SSH bundled with msysgit.
  2. PuTTY.

I’ve tested PuTTY, and it works fine. But whichever tool you choose, make sure that you have set up key-based logins and logged into your server before trying to use TortoiseGit. If you get a password prompt or an “Unknown server” message when trying to use TortoiseGit, it’s probably going to hang.

Installing msysgit

First, you need to install the latest version of msysgit. Make sure you select the following options:

  • Add “Git Bash here”
  • Run Git from the Windows Command Prompt
  • Use PLink at C:\Program Files\PuTTY\plink.exe (or use bundled SSH)

You must configure msysgit from the MS-DOS command prompt:

git config --global core.autocrlf false
git config --global user.name "Jane Doe"
git config --global user.email "jane@example.com"

You can set core.autocrlf to either true or false depending on your personal preferences.

Installing TortoiseGit

From here, installing TortoiseGit is trivial. Just download version 0.2 or newer, run the installer, and restart Windows Explorer.

TortoiseGit is still a one-person project, and Frank Li has provided a donation link. To avoid a repeat of the Git Cheetah situation, it would probably be wise to send Frank Li thanks, patches or money.

(Many thanks to Brian and Robinson for helping me find the TortoiseGit bug numbers for the issues listed in the tables.)