Working with Git Tower

Git Tower is a Git GUI for OSX.

Tower provides extended support for Gerrit, which comes in handy because we work with Gerrit in the TYPO3 project.

Although it is a paid product, we think the cost is absolutely worth it.

You can learn more about Git Tower on their website http://www.git-tower.com/.

Enabling Extended Gerrit Support in Tower

In Tower's preferences window, activate the Gerrit Code Review option. This will enable the following adaptions in Tower's UI.

../../_images/tower_enable_gerrit.png

Restart Tower after you enabled the setting.

Pushing to Gerrit

With the Gerrit option enabled in Tower's preferences, performing "Push" operations to Gerrit becomes easier:

Custom Menu Options

When right-clicking a local branch in the sidebar, a new Push <branch> to Gerrit… menu option is available. If you hold down the ⌥ key, the item becomes a "quick" action that will be performed without a confirmation dialog.

Custom Toolbar Button

You can add a custom Gerrit Push button to the toolbar. To do this, choose Customize Toolbar from the "View" main menu and drag the corresponding button onto the toolbar.

../../_images/tower_gerrit_pushbutton.png

You'll find that the following dialog is optimized for pushing to Gerrit. It will automatically format the Push Refspec according to Gerrit's requirements - so you can simply enter the name of the code review branch you want to push to.