gitcl

An IntelliJ IDEA-style Changelist TUI for git. Group your uncommitted changes into named, persistent buckets, then commit, shelve, or push each one independently — something plain git and git TUIs like lazygit/tig don't offer.

Usage

cargo build --release
./target/release/gitcl            # uses the git repo containing the cwd
./target/release/gitcl --repo /path/to/repo

Keybindings

Key	Action
Tab / Shift+Tab	Cycle pane focus (tree ↔ diff)
o	Open the selected file's diff (jump focus to the diff pane)
j/k, ↓/↑	Move selection, or scroll the diff when it's focused
h/l, ←/→	Scroll the focused pane horizontally (long paths/lines)
Enter	Fold/unfold the changelist under the cursor
Space	Stage/unstage the selected (or visual-range) files
Shift+V	Visual mode on a file row (batch select with j/k)
Esc	Exit visual mode
v	Toggle working-tree/staged diff
n	New changelist
r	Rename the selected changelist
d	Delete the selected changelist (files move to Default)
a	Set the selected changelist active (new changes default into it)
m	Move the selected (or visual-range) files to another changelist
c	Commit the selected changelist
Shift+S	Shelve the selected changelist
Shift+U	Unshelve — pick a shelf to apply (d inside deletes it)
Shift+P	Push the current branch
Ctrl+R / F5	Manual refresh
?	Toggle help
q / Ctrl+C	Quit

Shelving

Shift+S on a changelist saves its changes as a patch and reverts the files to HEAD — like IntelliJ's Shelve Changes, or a git stash that only touches the files you picked. Shift+U lists your shelves; applying one restores the changes as plain working-tree edits and puts the files in a changelist named after the shelf. Shelves live in .git/gitcl-shelf/ as ordinary git apply-able patch files (binary files included), so even without gitcl you can inspect or apply them by hand. If a shelf no longer applies cleanly because the code moved on, nothing is touched and the shelf is kept.

Pushing

Shift+P pushes the current branch to its configured upstream in the background (a spinner shows progress; the UI stays responsive). The first attempt never prompts — if the push actually needs input (HTTPS credentials, an unknown SSH host key, a key passphrase), it fails fast with a hint, and pressing Shift+P again reruns the push on the real terminal where git and ssh can prompt you normally, then returns to the TUI.

How it works

• Changelist assignments are stored in .git/changelist.json — private to your local clone, never committed, survives restarts.
• All git access shells out to the git CLI (status, diff, add, reset, commit, checkout, rm, apply, push) — no git2/libgit2 dependency.
• Committing a changelist uses git commit --only -- <paths>, which commits exactly those paths' working-tree content on top of HEAD without touching the index for any other path — so staged/partially-staged changes in other changelists are left untouched.
• Shelving follows the same isolation rule: only the shelved changelist's paths are ever passed to a git command, and the patch is written to disk before anything in the working tree is reverted, so a failure can't lose changes.

Known limitations (by design, see plan for rationale)

• No hunk-level (partial-file) changelist assignment — a changelist commits or shelves the whole current working-tree content of its files.
• A partially-staged file commits/shelves its working-tree content; the staged/unstaged split within a file is not preserved.
• No multi-VCS support or remote sync.

💖 Support & Donations

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