Repository-Related
SmartGit remembers opened repositories and (primarily) GUI-related settings. To open a repository, double-click it. If it already is open in another window when double-clicking, the window with the opened repository will become focused. The repository will open in a new window if the current window is currently executing commands or Open in New Window from the repository’s context menu has been selected. To open multiple repositories at once, use multiple selection (e.g. Ctrl/Cmd+click) and Open from the context menu.
Repositories can be arranged in groups. Right-click the repositories and select the target group or New Group from the Move To submenu. Alternatively, you can use drag-and-drop - either onto the target group or a repository inside the target group (see autoscroll).
Repositories can be marked as favorite using the Mark as Favorite (Unmark as Favorite). Favorite repositories are indicated with an asterisk after the name and are sorted before groups which are sorted before non-favorite repositories. Beside that a couple of background refresh operations are performed on favorite repositories.
Opening a Repository
Use Repository|Add or Create to either open an existing local repository (e.g. initialized or cloned with the Git or Hg command line client) or to initialize a new repository.
You need to specify which local directory you want to open. If the specified directory is not a Git or Mercurial repository yet, you have the option to initialize it.
Cloning a Repository
Use Repository|Clone to create a clone of another Git, Mercurial or SVN repository.
Specify the repository to clone either as a remote URL (e.g. ssh://user@server:port/path), or, if the repository is locally available on your file system, as a file path. In the Selection step you can configure whether submodules should be fetched as well: usually you will have this option selected, because submodules are an integral part of the main repository you are cloning. You should deselect Include Submodules only, if you do not wish to receive certain submodules. For details, refer to Submodules. Similarly, you will want to fetch the entire repository usually, including all heads and tags. If you are only interested in a specific head (branch) or tag, deselect Fetch all Heads and Tags. This allows you to specify a single branch to fetch and optionally to not Fetch all commits but Fetch Only the Latest x commits. Note that a few Git commands do not work properly for such partial repositories (e.g. Pull with Rebase). In the subsequent steps you have to provide the path to the local directory where the clone should be created and a few clone options.
Settings
Use Repository|Settings to configure certain repository-specific settings.
On the first page you find options related to the Pull command .
On the second page you can configure your name and email address that
will be used when
committing
for this repository. To change the global settings (for all
repositories, in your .gitconfig), select Remember as default.
On the third page you can configure which text encoding SmartGit should assume when showing text files in the Changes view or Compare window. A lot of UTF-8 encoded text files, with or without byte order mark (BOM), can be detected automatically.