Emacs is free and in my opinion Magit is far, far superior to Tower / Fork / SourceTree (used them all on mac extensively at some point; out of those, fork is pretty nice and lightweight).

I'm not an emacs user but always install it (via spacemacs) everywhere solely to host Magit.

The terminal is the best and only git client you need and it will always be free. You are doing yourself a disservice as a developer by not learning how to use your terminal

I'm not sure about that in the case of git. I used the terminal UI exclusively for a long time but it's so bizarrely designed that I've been interested in using a GUI for a while. There are a lot of reasons a dev should learn to use a terminal but making git more pleasant to use isn't necessarily one of them.

GUIs aren't super flexible but they are good at taking a common flow users go through and making it stupid simple to exercise. A lot of the usage of git should be stupid simple, with only infrequent need for complex interaction. Obviously there are some people out there for which a GUI will never be sufficient for their needs, but I'd argue it isn't the common case.

I'm typically a heavy terminal user. Git is my exception. a) the UI of git cli is just so terrible that I'd rather fill my brain with more important things, and b) for viewing what's changed, `git diff` just doesn't cut it relative to a GUI.

Sourcetree is my go to git client, but if I couldn't use sourcetree I'd be OK with pretty much any git GUI. But git CLI is reserved for particularly tricky things that GUIs just can't handle well. (And I need to look up the specific flags or commands every single time.)

Cool ! Git fork looks quite like GitX (which is unfortunately not indevelopment anymore) !

I'm a big Fork advocat and use it on a daily basis, but I fear they will charge for a new version at some point in the future.

I think that because it seems they founded a company "Fork" which inevitable will need to make money eventually.

edit: I'm of course willing to pay some bucks for great software if it's a fair pricing model.

Just yesterday I noticed a "Fork Activation" option in the Fork menu with fields for an email and a license key. I think you might be right, it won't be free for much longer.

Yep, and the 'Buy Now' link leads to https://fork.dev/buy

Not subscription based!

Seems like a fair price to me. Will propably buy it if the time comes.

Somehow I hesitate to pay subscription based models, although I understand why this model exists.

I found P4 Merge to be totally inscrutable, could you elaborate on what makes it so good?

It's a 3 way merge tool that works well with Fork. To be honest I can't say how it compares with other merge tools, I tried a few merge tools some time back and liked P4 best.

I suggest using SourceGear DiffMerge for resolving conflicts. Best 3-way merge conflict handling tool I've tried:

https://sourcegear.com/diffmerge/

Another suggestion is Beyond Compare, the 3 way merge is a pro feature though:

https://www.scootersoftware.com/

Better than Meld?