rugit

A standalone Magit-style Git TUI, written in Rust.

rugit brings Magit's core interaction model to a terminal application that does not depend on Emacs: a status buffer made of foldable sections, commands that act on the thing at point, and transient menus with toggleable command-line switches. Git operations shell out to your real git binary, so hooks, commit signing, credential helpers, and your git config all behave exactly as they do on the command line.

Status: early (v0.1). The core workflow — stage/unstage/discard, commit, branch, merge, rebase (including interactive), stash, push/pull/fetch, log and revision views, search — works. See Roadmap for what's missing.

Features

• Magit-style status buffer — untracked/unstaged/staged files with inline diffs, stashes, and recent commits as a tree of collapsible sections
• Stage at any granularity — s stages whatever is at point: a file, a hunk, or a single diff line; u unstages the same way
• Transient menus — commit, branch, merge, rebase, cherry-pick, revert, reset, stash, tag, remote, push, pull, fetch, and log popups with Magit-style switches (-a → --all, -f → --force-with-lease, ...), value arguments (--author=...), and git-config variables
• References buffer — y lists branches, remote-tracking branches, and tags in foldable groups, each showing its upstream tracking state
• Pickers and prompts — checkout from a filterable branch picker; type a name to create branches; unmatched picker input is passed through, so tags and SHAs work too
• Incremental search — / with live highlighting and smart-case; n/N jump between matches
• Log & revision views — l opens the log menu; RET on a commit or stash opens its diff
• Copy to clipboard — y s copies the value at point (a commit, ref, stash, or file path) and y b the buffer's revision; a real clipboard tool (wl-copy / xclip / xsel / pbcopy) is used when available so failures are reported, else OSC 52 (works over SSH)
• Real git, transparently — every command rugit runs is logged to a process buffer (`); commit messages open in your $GIT_EDITOR
• Auto-refresh — the status buffer updates when .git changes, even from other terminals
• Configurable — remap any key, restyle every color, all from one TOML file

Installation

Requires a Rust toolchain and a git binary on $PATH.

cargo install --git https://github.com/sei40kr/rugit
# or from a checkout:
cargo install --path .

Usage

Run rugit anywhere inside a git repository.

Default key bindings

The bindings are vim-flavored: j/k move, g and z are prefixes, n/N step through search matches.

Key	Action
j / k, arrows	move cursor
C-j / C-k (also g j / g k, z j / z k)	next / previous section
g h or ^	parent section
TAB (also z a)	collapse / expand section
z A	toggle section recursively
z o / z c	open / close section (z c again closes the parent)
z O / z C	open / close section recursively
z r / z m	open / close one fold level
z R / z M	open / close all sections
C-d / C-u, PgDn / PgUp	scroll half page
C-f / C-b	scroll full page
g g / G, Home / End	go to top / bottom
g r	refresh
s / u	stage / unstage the thing at point (file, hunk, or line)
S / U	stage all tracked / unstage all
x	discard the change at point (with confirmation)
RET	show the commit / stash at point
y r	references buffer (branches, remotes, tags)
y s / y b	copy value at point / buffer revision to clipboard
/	incremental search (RET to confirm, ESC to clear)
n / N	next / previous search match
`	git process log
?	help (scrollable)
q	close buffer / quit

Each of these opens a transient menu:

Key	Menu
c	commit
b	branch
m	merge
r	rebase
A	cherry-pick
_	revert
O	reset
Z	stash
t	tag
M	remote
p / P	push
F	pull
f	fetch
l	log
o	submodule
W	worktree

Inside a transient menu, keys like -a toggle switches and highlighted actions run with the enabled flags.

During an interactive rebase, the todo buffer has its own keys: p / r / e / s / f / d set the action for the commit at point (pick / reword / edit / squash / fixup / drop), M-j / M-k move it, and C-c C-c / C-c C-k confirm or abort the rebase.

Configuration

~/.config/rugit/config.toml ($XDG_CONFIG_HOME is respected). Everything is optional; invalid entries produce a startup warning instead of an error.

scrolloff = 3

[keys.global]
"g r" = "refresh"     # space-separated key sequences are supported
"P p" = "push"

[keys.status]
"s" = "stage"

[colors]               # role names: see src/theme.rs
diff-add     = "green" # color names, "#rrggbb", or 256-color indexes ("42")
cursor-bg    = "#3a3a3a"
search-match-bg = "magenta"   # bg of search matches
search-match-fg = "lightcyan" # fg of search matches

Command names for remapping are listed in the help buffer (?).

Design

The architecture — section trees, the event loop, the keymap trie, the transient engine, and why rugit shells out to git instead of using libgit2 — is documented in DESIGN.md. A contributor-oriented cheat sheet lives in CLAUDE.md.

Roadmap

• Region selection for multi-line staging
• Word-level diff highlighting and syntax highlighting
• Persisted transient switch defaults

License

MIT