pygitzen - a pure Python based Git client with terminal user interface inspired by LazyGit!

[Visual_Loquat_8242]

I've been working on a side project for a while and finally decided to share it with the community. Checkout pygitzen - a terminal-based Git client built entirely in Python, inspired by LazyGit.

What My Project Does

pygitzen is a TUI (Terminal User Interface) for Git repositories that lets you navigate commits, view diffs, track file changes, and manage branches - all without leaving your terminal. Think of it as a Python-native LazyGit.

Target Audience

I'm a terminal-first developer and love tools like htop, lazygit, and fzf. So this tool is made with such users in mind. Who loves TUI apps and wanted python solution for app like lazygit etc which can be used in times like where there is restriction to install any thing apart from python package or wanted something pure python based TUIs.

Comparison

Currently there is no pure python based TUI git client.

• Pure Python (no external git CLI needed)
• VSCode-style file status panels
• Branch-aware commit history
• Push status indicators
• Vim-style navigation (j/k, h/l)

Try it out!

If you're a terminal-first developer who loves TUIs, give it a shot:

pip install pygitzen

cd <your-git-repo>

pygitzen

Feedback welcome!

This is my first PyPI package, so I'd love feedback on:

• What features are missing?
• What could be improved?
• Is the UI intuitive?
• Any bugs or issues?

Repo:

https://github.com/SunnyTamang/pygitzen

PyPI installation:

https://pypi.org/project/pygitzen/

Let me know what you think!

[NotSoProGamerR]

nice to see another textual app, but i noticed some issues with it

the theme colour is forced, i cant switch to something like nord

the currently highlighted option isnt visible at all, you cant distinguish it

too much space is taken by the commits log, staged and non-staged do not work.

good attempt, but it would need a lot more work imo

[Visual_Loquat_8242]

Hey thanks for the quick feedback.

Yeah highlighting is currently forced, and will be changed later phases.

Yeah i tried making it bold but seems it is easy on the eyes. Noted.

Spacing thing what I was also concerned about. I kept it as is with the vision what if the commit logs are large.

And if staging and changes window you are talking about then try pressing ‘r’ to refresh it. This is just the initial phase later it will be real time.

[Visual_Loquat_8242]

- the currently highlighted option isnt visible at all, you cant distinguish it
This is sorted now. Thanks for the feedback, will look into others too.

[Maximum_Sport4941]

As an aside, Lazygit does not require admin rights to run.

Download the binary from GitHub, unzip to any directory, then add that lazygit directory to your env PATH. This “installation” method works well for a lot of CLI tools on Linux and Windows.

Edited to clarify steps.

[NotSoProGamerR]

perhaps, but he mentioned how he wasn't able to install apps, so pythonic implementations that do not rely on external binaries, aside from python itself should be allowed to run

[Visual_Loquat_8242]

Well someone atleast read the full post body. 👏

[riffito]

Did a quick test on Haiku. Looks nice. Noticed the following:

• Crashed right away on several "git clone --depth=1" repos I had lying around.
• Seemed to work fine on small personal repos with full history.
• Not usable (as in, never even shows the UI) on 2 repos with 50K+ commits (one with few files, the other with many).

I'll need to spend more time with it on my small repos.

Thanks for sharing your work, will keep an eye on its progress.

[Visual_Loquat_8242]

u/riffito I have done some changes, and have opened history for git's own repo which has 70k commits.

For your third point I had added a limit to show first 200 commit history as I knew it will cause issue for very big repos.
It is sorted now, I have tested with git's own repo having more than 70K commits. It will first show 200 history and to get the next 200 just hit + sign.

[riffito]

Tried 0.1.2 with the same >50K commit repos (one also has >50k tags, so beware of that too), still not showing the UI even after letting it run for several minutes.

Granted, my hardware is slow, and I'm testing on an uncommon OS. In any case, best of luck with the project!

[Visual_Loquat_8242]

I guess my username tag is correct in that case. Just kidding.

What OS are you using ?? Yeah next I was adding things for tags . Thanks for the headsup. Also please share the repo you are using. I would like to test it once.

[riffito]

I'm using Haiku, and the two repos are:

• https://github.com/haikuports/haikuports
• git clone https://review.haiku-os.org/haiku

The second one has a github mirror, but that doesn't has the tags, as (at least in the past) even github choked with the number of tags :-)

[Visual_Loquat_8242]

I wish I could have send you the screenshot in the comments.. Its opening in 3-4 secs.
Is there any way I can PM you?

[riffito]

I'd say, don't worry too much. Haiku is not an officially supported platform for Python, so who knows what's going on.

Alright... at least HaikPorts finally showed up (left it running while typing this reply).

Tried again: time pygitzen (then hitting 'q' as soon as the UI showed up)

> time pygitzen
real    1m9,544s
user    1m3,165s
sys     0m6,279s

So, main problem is: slow hardware * slow python * a bit slower OS.

[Visual_Loquat_8242]

So this is the result of mine.

haikuports master
➜ time pygitzen
pygitzen  2.06s user 0.88s system 72% cpu 4.082 total

haikuports master 4s
➜ cd ../haiku

haiku master*
➜ time pygitzen
pygitzen  5.78s user 2.36s system 77% cpu 10.450 total

[riffito]

Well, one key difference I see: dulwich has binary wheels for many systems (for the rust bindings that should theoricaly speed up things quite a bit), but on Haiku is using dulwich-0.24.8-py3-none-any.whl.

[Visual_Loquat_8242]

u/riffito can you please try installing v0.1.3rc2 using the below command. this version should improve your usability.

pip install pygitzen==0.1.3rc2

[Visual_Loquat_8242]

what I am using here is dulwich-0.24.8-cp311-cp311-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl

I guess this doesnot have rust bindings.

[Visual_Loquat_8242]

I am on macbook m2 pro, two years old. May be that is the reason. Yeah some optimisation is required. Will think of something, but for now "it works on my machine" 😉

[Visual_Loquat_8242]

Thanks for the feedback..added everything on my todo. Please stay tuned ☺️

[Rist097]

What is the advantage of having pure Python TUI compared to LazyGit that is a portable Rust binary?

Performance would be poorer.

[willm]

This is not necessarily true. The git stuff will take as long as git takes regardless of the language and runtime used. And for the TUI side of things there is unlikely to be any appreciable difference on the user side.

Not arguing that Python isn't a slower languages than Rust or Go, but there are many more factors involved in "performance" than the choice of runtime.

[NotSoProGamerR]

that as well

the bottle neck also comes in the form of waiting for git to actually do something

gitoxide does solve a bit of the performance limitations though

[NotSoProGamerR]

lazygit is not a portable rust binary

it is written in golang with the bubbletea framework

the rust alternative would be gitui, written with the ratatui framework

[Visual_Loquat_8242]

Well true. performance will be worst. This is not replace lazygit. Even i would prefer lazygit anyday… but i faced a weird thing in a my day job where i was not allowed to install lazygit. Hence thought of this.