Go get GitExtensions and enjoy life

Dont use the GUI. The initial learning curve is slow, but the improvement on the team productivity after the initial culture shock is huge.

Had the same dificulties on my company, we did a radical change from SS to Git. Big shared code, about 100 people from different teams.

But the teams where convinced about the value and in 4 months we found the best workflow for our scenario. Now we cant imagine our lives without Git.

Dont use the GUI. The initial learning curve is slow, but the improvement on the team productivity after the initial culture shock is huge.

Had the same dificulties on my company, we did a radical change from SS to Git. Big shared code, about 100 people from different teams.

But the teams where convinced about the value and in 4 months we found the best workflow for our scenario. Now we cant imagine our lives without Git.

The command line may be slow now, but as you learn it, you only get faster.  I've noticed it is much like resharper. You are slow at first until you learn where everything is, but eventually you are much faster using it than you would be without.

Command line.  I still haven't tried Git Extensions though (I will this weekend)

With git aliases, you can shorten any commands that are annoying.  Easy learning curve IMO.

Command line is a geek badge of honor for sure, but at the same time it's still useful on occasion. Thing is that none of the git GUIs I have seen are very usable. They're either dialog or form element fests, so at this point you're probably better off with the command line for git.

if you can do everything you need and can do from the command line, but faster, who cares! just go for it

Do you see a need to rename files using the shell? With Git the tedious rename procedure known from SVN is finally gone (detect renames!) which is a major advantage, especially if you're dcommitting to SVN.

I let ReSharper do the file rename and use the command line to add files to the index, which is what I found to be slowing me down initially. Until I discovered git add with the --interactive switch which shows a list of changed and unknown files.

I use GitExtensions.

If using a GUI is cheating, what is using Resharper? Ain't NHibernate cheating cause you're not writing that SQL and plumbing code yourself?

Go and use what works.

What is wrong with cheating? Isn't that what computers are all about? :-)

I'm no GIT expert, but after initial spike with command line, I moved to GUI tools. I've been using SVN for the last couple of years solely from GUI, and I don't think I lost anything by doing so. How would Git be different about it?

One command line advantage to me is that it is the same on every platform. The cross-platform GUIs look like crap everywhere.

Another factor can be the relative immaturity of the git GUIs when compared to, say, TortoiseSVN. But this problem is only temporary (hopefully).

I'm not gonna take sides until we have truly usable GUIs. For now I have to use a bit of both.

@Tim

Yes but not in a large scale. Mostly for my own personal projects and generally following other projects from GitHub.

I can't comment on how good the GUI tools are for working with other people's branches.

"Are you saying if I rename a file in my solution, then add it though Git, Git will see it as a rename?  I did not know that and that could be very beneficial in this current "hurdle""

git add . && git add -u

That will pick up renames provided the contents of the file haven't changed too significantly.

With regards to the command line vs. gui argument, I'll admit I haven't used a git gui beyond using gitk to look at diffs. However, the productivity I get using git from the command line is greater than the productivity I've gotten out gui tools for other SCMs including Tortoise SVN, Subclipse, Subversive and Visual Studio's VSS integration.

One you learn the command line, you can do really cool things with very little effort.

Like a few others, my Git experience is command line.  When I originally picked up Git, I loaded up the GUI tools, Git Extensions, and it didn't jive well with me.  My assumptions of the tools to the task didn't align or something.  It also didn't work well with my addiction to mouseless computing. ;)

I tossed those tools to the side, loaded up Portable Git, opened up a command prompt, and set off--and I haven't looked back.

Since I spend my entire day with a PowerShell window open, I've tweaked my PowerShell environment for Git lovin' as well as wrote cmdlets, functions, etc. to help with common tasks (things that went beyond a simple alias).

For renames "git add -A" is your friend, it'll stage any additions/modifications and deletions in one. Git automatically assumes that any new file and deleted file that share a certain percentage of content (not sure of the actual percentage) are actually the same file, just renamed; this is awesome as (for me) 90% of using VS integration with SVN was for the rename support.

I use git gui most of the time to stage changes because I don't like viewing diffs from the command line. I use gitk to visualize branch structure and to perform the occasional task such as reseting a branch or creating a tag. I use the command line for everything else. This feels like a reasonable balance to me.

I'd say learn the command line, and learn it well.  I bet you won't need the GUI for most things, unless you're merging or cherry-picking files/(or lines in files) to stage for your commit.

The GUI tools can be helpful, but the CLI is so good I can't imagine using some ugly GUI tool to do my day-to-day workflow.

+1 to what Sergio said about being the same  across platforms.  I use git on windows and mac.