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One thing I am curious about (genuinely curious!) is how so many of the mac git GUIs are closed-source and/or paid apps. The original CLI git client is GPLv2, IIRC.

Are the mac clients calling the git command line tool, have they re-implemented the git file manipulation routines, or are they using some other means of manipulating the repository files?

I'm just interested to know which approach they chose.

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Note that git is designed for people to build things on top of it, including GUIs, by using the command line tools. The git commands generally come in two flavors, called plumbing commands and porcelain commands. The later are what users of git are meant to see. Their interfaces are not necessarily stable. The later are kept stable and often have input and output designed to be machine friendly.

There are plumbing commands to do very low level repository manipulation, perfect for GUIs to use.

I'm pretty sure they're calling the git command line tool. As far as I can remember, I've had to tell all of the ones I've tried where to find the git command.

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