Sublime Merge - Git, Done Sublime

September 20, 2018 by Jon Skinner All Posts

(You can download Sublime Merge from https://www.sublimemerge.com/download)

There's a company that makes photography accessories, called Really Right Stuff. They make lovely equipment, but what I really like is the name. It embodies the idea of building something that goes beyond the minimum: making it as good as it can be, paying attention to the details, and getting it really right.

When it comes to software, getting it really right goes beyond functionality. The feel, aesthetics, and performance all have to be there.

There's a real pleasure using software that gets it really right, as a lot of the time, it doesn't. We're all too familiar with clunky layouts, unresponsive buttons, choppy scrolling, tedious splash screens, and flickering on every interaction.

After typing git add -p in the terminal one too many times, I thought to myself: we've got some pretty great tech in Sublime Text. What if we used it to build a Git client? Could we make it fast? Could we make it buttery smooth, without flickering or blocking? Could we make something that's really, really right?

Today, I'd like to introduce Sublime Merge. It combines the UI engine of Sublime Text, with a from-scratch implementation of Git*. The result is, to us at least, something pretty special.

Sublime Merge - Commit Dialog

You can download Sublime Merge, and try it for yourself - there's no time limit, no accounts, no metrics, and no tracking. The evaluation version is fully functional, but is restricted to the light theme only. Individual purchases are buy once, use forever, with 3 years of updates included in the purchase. Business licenses are available on a subscription basis. Sublime Merge runs on Windows, Mac and Linux.

It's still early days for Sublime Merge - it has only been used by us and our small team of beta testers so far. We'd love to hear what you think. We'll be on the Forums listening to any feedback - let us know how you get on with it!


* We have a custom implementation of Git for reading repositories, which drives a lot of our high performance functionality. However we defer to Git itself for operations that mutate the repository (Staging, Committing, Checking out branches, etc).