Introducing Gnomit: a simple Git commit message editor for Gnome

15 Aug 2018

Screenshot of Gnomit showing the overflow highlighting on the subject line and the automatically inserted empty line between the subject line and the rest of the commit message. — Gnomit helps me write better commit messages.

Gnomit is a simple Git commit message editor for Gnome, inspired by the excellent Komet app by Mayur Pawashe that I was using on macOS¹.

I started working on Gnomit this weekend and I’m currently happily using it as my default Git editor. It’s a simple first project and a way for me to get acquainted with GTK+, GJS, and Vala – some of the core elements of Gnome.

I do need to properly package it up and complete the Vala version. If you try it out, please do let me know if you have any trouble with the Gspell spell checker dependency. I had all sorts of issues with the import and I have a suspicion that you might also.²

I hope to have a proper package (via Flatpak, perhaps) ready soon³ but, if you want to play with it in the meanwhile and don’t mind getting your hands dirty with a possible Gspell dependency, the GJS version is entirely usable and available on source.ind.ie.

Before I switched to Pop!_OS. ↩︎
I have a lot to learn on this new platform, especially concerning dependency management and packaging-related matters. ↩︎
16 Aug 2018: I now have a working Flatpak version built using Gnome Builder. It launches considerably slower than the plain script, however, so I’m going to hold off merging it into master. ↩︎