GitCanvas
See what Git is thinking. An interactive, beginner-friendly view of your real repository — a spatial commit graph, a working-tree pipeline, merge/rebase simulators, reflog, and blame — right inside VS Code. Every button runs a real git command and shows you exactly what it ran, so you learn git while you use it.
Why GitCanvas
Git is easy to use and hard to understand. GitCanvas is built for the moment someone asks "but what did that actually do?":
- Every GUI action executes real git (
git add, git commit, git stash push -u, git rebase, …) and the built-in terminal panel shows the exact command plus git's real output — not a scripted approximation.
- Honest teaching. The simulations match git's true behavior, including the classics that trip beginners up:
reset --hard leaves untracked files alone, stash pop restores your changes unstaged, unstaging before your first commit uses git rm --cached because there's no HEAD yet.
- Educational notes everywhere explain the what and the why, with the underlying command for each view.
Features
- Commit Graph — commits, branches, and merges laid out spatially with time-based lane reuse (like
git log --graph, but readable). Click any line to trace it; checkout any commit from the row.
- Working Tree pipeline — Working Directory → Staging → Repository → Remote → Stashes as one flow. Stage, unstage, discard, stash, commit, amend, push.
- Clone from the GUI — paste a URL, pick a folder, done. No repo open? GitCanvas offers to clone or init right there.
- Merge & Rebase simulators — watch what a merge or rebase will do, including conflicts, then run it for real with a per-file resolve → continue/abort flow.
- Remote Sync — fetch / pull / push / force-with-lease with ahead/behind made visible.
- Reflog — the "undo history" of your repo, for the day a reset seems to have eaten your work.
- File History & Blame — a file's lifeline across renames, and per-line attribution.
Getting started
- Install the extension.
- Open any git repository (or let GitCanvas clone one for you).
- Run “GitCanvas: Open” from the Command Palette, or click the GitCanvas icon in the Activity Bar.
Safety
- All git invocations use argument arrays (never a shell), so file names and messages can't be interpreted as shell syntax.
- Destructive actions (
reset --hard, clean, force-push) sit behind explicit two-step confirmations, and force-push uses --force-with-lease.
- Conflict-prone operations (merge, revert, cherry-pick) open a real resolve flow; rebase auto-aborts on failure rather than leaving the repo half-applied.
Contributing
Issues and PRs welcome — this project is young and moving fast. See the repo for development setup (npm install, npm test runs the full suite against real throwaway repositories).
License
MIT
| |
