After several days of use, I can say without exaggeration: Rebased is currently the best Git GUI client. Anyone who has used JetBrains IDEs knows their Git experience is excellent—especially the diff functionality. But in recent years, JetBrains has stagnated in the AI coding space, causing many to switch to other tools, yet their Git experience remains unforgettable. A brilliant developer took the open-source IntelliJ Community Edition, stripped out all language-specific features, kept only the Git functionality, made extensive UI optimizations, and created the most powerful Git client ever—Rebased. For those already accustomed to the JetBrains ecosystem, it’s virtually zero learning curve—it feels familiar right out of the box. Key highlights:

• Fully open source (Apache 2.0 license), free to use, customizable
• Top-tier diff/review experience (JetBrains’ hallmark advantage)
• Complete JetBrains VCS tool windows (Commit, Git Log graph, Branches panel)
• Interactive Rebase editor + visual conflict resolver
• Built-in full-text search
• Built-in terminal (multi-tab support)
• Native Git Worktree support
• 100% same shortcuts and workflow as IntelliJ The only downside is slightly higher memory usage than ultra-lightweight Git tools, but still far less than a full JetBrains IDE. With multi-tab terminal + Git Worktree, combined with tools like Claude Code and Amp, it can already replace a bunch of so-called “agentic IDEs” like Superset.

Thanks to @ayanamist for sharing

DetachHead/rebased Source: https://github.com/DetachHead/rebased

Rebased

A git client based on the IntelliJ platform. This project aims to be an open-source remake of the short-lived jetbrains git client (https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IJPL-72504/Make-git-client-a-standalone-app#focus=Comments-27-12868395.0-0). It’s basically just a JetBrains IDE with all the bundled plugins removed except the git integration, with some additional UI tweaks.

Why?

See this youtrack issue (https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IJPL-72504/Make-git-client-a-standalone-app) for the many reasons people have been requesting this for almost a decade. At the time of writing, it’s the #3 most upvoted open issue on YouTrack.

Installation

Linux

Download the appimage from GitHub releases (https://github.com/DetachHead/rebased/releases). We recommend using either AppManager (https://github.com/kem-a/AppManager) or Gear Lever (https://github.com/mijorus/gearlever) to install it to your applications menu, and for automatic updates.

Windows

You can either download the installer .exe from GitHub releases (https://github.com/DetachHead/rebased/releases) or install via winget:

winget install detachhead.rebased --source winget

macOS

Install with homebrew (https://brew.sh/):

brew install detachhead/tap/rebased

Manual installation

Download the .dmg from GitHub releases (https://github.com/DetachHead/rebased/releases)

After copying Rebased.app to your Applications folder, you may see the following error message:

“Rebased.app” is damaged and can’t be opened. You should move it to the Bin.

This is Apple lying to you. Nothing is “damaged”, it’s just not code-signed with an Apple Developer certificate. To fix it, run the following command:

xattr -rd com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Rebased.app

Credits

• https://github.com/obiscr/intellij-community - a previous attempt at creating a jetbrains git client that i cherrypicked some commits from
• jetbrains, obviously

The remainder of this readme is mostly unchanged from the upstream intellij-community repo.

Getting the Source Code

This section will guide you through getting the project sources and help avoid common issues in git config and other steps before opening it in the IDE.

Prerequisites

• Git (https://git-scm.com/) installed
• Install IntelliJ IDEA 2023.2 (https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/download) or higher.
• For Windows set these git config to avoid common issues during cloning:

  git config --global core.longpaths true
  git config --global core.autocrlf input
  

Clone Main Repository

IntelliJ open source repository is available from the GitHub repository (https://github.com/detachhead/rebased), which can be cloned or downloaded as a zip file (based on a branch) into ``.

The master (default) branch contains the source code which will be used to create the next major version of all JetBrains IDEs.

The branch names and build numbers for older releases of JetBrains IDEs can be found on the Build Number Ranges (https://plugins.jetbrains.com/docs/intellij/build-number-ranges.html) page.

You can clone this project (https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/manage-projects-hosted-on-github.html#clone-from-GitHub) directly using IntelliJ IDEA.

Alternatively, follow the steps below in a terminal:

git clone https://github.com/detachhead/rebased.git --recurse-submodules
cd rebased

• For faster download: If the complete repository history isn’t needed, create shallow clone (https://git-scm.com/docs/git-clone#Documentation/git-clone.txt—depthdepth) To download only the latest revision of the repository, add --depth 1 option after clone.
• Cloning in IntelliJ IDEA also supports creating shallow clone.

This project requires additional Android modules from separate Git repositories, which is why --recurse-submodules is needed. Ideally these should not be needed since Rebased is not built with the Android plugin, but it seems too tightly integrated with the codebase to be able to easily remove it. So for now I’ve kept it as a git submodule instead of relying on a script. This way, the project is always pinned to a version of the android repo that works with it.

Building Rebased

Standard GitHub runners (https://docs.github.com/en/actions/concepts/runners/github-hosted-runners) can no longer be used to build the project due to the disk size limitation. Now we use larger runners (https://docs.github.com/en/enterprise-cloud@latest/actions/concepts/runners/larger-runners) which are only available for organizations and enterprises using the GitHub Team or GitHub Enterprise Cloud plans. Users of personal GitHub accounts can use the prebuilt binaries (https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community/releases), or build IntelliJ IDEA from source code locally.

These instructions will help you build Rebased from source code, which is based on the IntelliJ community edition. These instructions are mostly unchanged from upstream for now so they might be inaccurate because this project is still in early development and I am still learing how everything works and changing things around.

IntelliJ IDEA ‘2023.2’ or newer is required.

Opening the IntelliJ IDEA Source Code in the IDE

Using the latest IntelliJ IDEA, click ‘File | Open’, select the `` directory.

If IntelliJ IDEA displays a message about a missing or out-of-date required plugin (e.g. Kotlin), enable, upgrade, or install that plugin (https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/managing-plugins.html) and restart IntelliJ IDEA.

Build Configuration Steps

1. JDK Setup
   • Use JetBrains Runtime 21 (without JCEF) to compile
   • IDE will prompt to download it on the first build

JetBrains Runtime without JCEF is required. If jbr-21 SDK points to JCEF version, change it to the non-JCEF version:

• Add idea.is.internal=true to idea.properties and restart the IDE.
• Go to ‘Project Structure | SDKs’
• Click ‘Browse’ → ‘Download…’
• Select version 21 and vendor ‘JetBrains Runtime’
• To confirm if the JDK is correct, navigate to the SDK page with jbr-21 selected. Search for jcef, it should NOT yield a result.

2. Maven Configuration : If the Maven plugin is disabled, add the path variable (https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/absolute-path-variables.html) “MAVEN_REPOSITORY” pointing to /.m2/repository directory.

3. Memory Settings

   • Ensure a minimum 8GB RAM on your computer.
   • With the minimum RAM, disable “Compile independent modules in parallel” in ‘Settings | Build, Execution, Deployment | Compiler’.
   • With notably higher available RAM, Increase “User-local heap size” to 3000.

Building the IntelliJ IDEA Application from Source

To build IntelliJ IDEA from source, choose ‘Build | Build Project’ from the main menu.

To build installation packages, run the installers.cmd script in `` directory.

installers.cmd will work on both Windows and Unix systems.

Options to build installers are passed as system properties to installers.cmd command. You may find the list of available properties in BuildOptions.kt

Installer build examples:

# Build installers only for current operating system:
./installers.cmd -Dintellij.build.target.os=current

# Build source code _incrementally_ (do not build what was already built before):
./installers.cmd -Dintellij.build.incremental.compilation=true

The installers.cmd is used to run OpenSourceCommunityInstallersBuildTarget from the command line. You can also call it directly from IDEA, using run configuration Build IntelliJ IDEA Installers (current OS).

Dockerized Build Environment

To build installation packages inside a Docker container with preinstalled dependencies and tools, run the following command in `` directory (on Windows, use PowerShell):

docker build . --target intellij_idea --tag intellij_idea_env
docker run --rm --user "$(id -u)" --volume "${PWD}:/community" intellij_idea_env

Please remember to specify the --user "$(id -u)" argument for the container’s user to match the host’s user. This prevents issues with permissions for the checked-out repository, the build output, and the mounted Maven cache, if any. To reuse the existing Maven cache from the host system, add the following option to docker run command: --volume "$HOME/.m2:/home/ide_builder/.m2"

Running IntelliJ IDEA

To run the IntelliJ IDEA that was built from source, choose ‘Run | Run’ from the main menu. This will use the preconfigured run configuration IDEA.

To run tests on the build, apply these settings to the ‘Run | Edit Configurations… | Templates | JUnit’ configuration tab:

• Working dir: /bin
• VM options: -ea

Running IntelliJ IDEA in CI/CD environment

To run tests outside of IntelliJ IDEA, run the tests.cmd command in `` directory.tests.cmd can be used in both Windows and Unix systems.

Options to run tests are passed as system properties to tests.cmd command. You may find the list of available properties in TestingOptions.kt

# Build source code _incrementally_ (do not build what was already built before): ` ./tests.cmd -Dintellij.build.incremental.compilation=true

#Run a specific test:
./tests.cmd -Dintellij.build.test.patterns=com.intellij.util.ArrayUtilTest

tests.cmd is used just to run CommunityRunTestsBuildTarget from the command line. You can also call it directly from IDEA, see run configuration tests for an example.