Differences between tortoisegit and gitlab

Question

I am under the impression that gitlab both creates a repository similar to github (but private), and also provides a web client interface to the repository.

I am also under the impression that tortoisegit is a Windows based git client.

Am I correct?

If I am using gitlab, do I need tortoisegit?

What is the difference between the gitlab web client and tortoisegit?

Answer 1

TortoiseGit is simply a native GUI git client application. GitLab is a full-brown repository management and development lifecycle framework, which provides some functionality similar to GitHub, such as pull-requests, issue tracking, user authentication, etc. They are two different, indepedent applications used for two different things.

You can use GitLab with any git client, including but not limited to TortoiseGit and the built-in git CLI.

On the other hand, you can use TortoiseGit with any local or remote git repo host, including but not limited to GitLab.

From the Arch Linux Wiki for GitLab:

Gitlab is a free git repository management application based on Ruby on Rails. It is distributed under the MIT License and its source code can be found on Github. It is a very active project with a monthly release cycle and ideal for businesses that want to keep their code private. Consider it as a self hosted Github but open source.

About git clients

By the way, I don't recommend TortoiseGit. I don't recommend git GUIs in general, actually, because I think they abstract away too many details about how git actually works. But if you're going to use a GUI client for git, then I recommend SourceTree instead, because it doesn't abstract away as much details as TortoiseGit does.

TortoiseGit is heavily influenced by TortiseSVN, which is centered around SVN-style workflows, so you aren't really guided into working with git-style workflows with TortoiseGit.