Install gitk on Mac

Question 1

Correct, the 1.7.12.4 (Apple Git-37) does not come with gitk. You can install a more recent version of Git + git-ui as a separate formula by using Homebrew (executable brew). More thorough instructions are located on The fastest and easiest way to install Ruby on a Mac in 2022 (see this commit extracting git-gui/gitk into its own formula: git-gui: split from git formula.)

Run the following commands at the terminal:

brew update
brew install git
brew install git-gui

If you get an error indicating it could not link Git, then you may need to change permissions/owners of the files it mentions.

Once completed, run:

type -a git

And make sure it shows:

/usr/local/bin/git

If it does not, run:

brew doctor

And make the path change to put /usr/local/bin earlier in the path. Now, gitk should be on your path (along with an updated version of Git).

Question 2

The Git Mac version comes without gitk, but if you do brew install git you get instant access to gitk.

I'm using macOS v10.12.5 (Sierra).

But this stopped working. You must install brew install git-gui

Question 3

I just had the same problem and solved it as follows:

Download the official Git package for Mac from http://git-scm.com/download/mac
Install the package. This places all the binaries in folder /usr/local/git/bin.
Optionally, run the included script to make gitk accessible outside of terminals
Either add /usr/local/git/bin to your PATH or use an alias (alias gitk='/usr/local/git/bin/gitk')

Question 4

If you already have Git installed via Homebrew, you can just do upgrade:

type -a git
brew upgrade git
type -a git

Output

/usr/bin/git
/usr/local/bin/git

The one at local/bin will have gitk.

Question 5

As of macOS v10.15.6 (Catalina), I run:

brew install git
brew install git-gui

And it worked for me.

Question 6

I had the same issue. I installed GitX instead.

You can install GitX from here:

http://rowanj.github.io/gitx/

Download the package and install it. After that, open gitk from spotlight search, go to the top left corner. Click on GitX and enable the terminal usage.

Go to your repository and simply type:

gitx --all

It will open the GUI.

User manual

Question 7

There are two ways to fix this:

The Unix way (simple and recommended)
The Homebrew way

1. Unix Way: In four simple steps

Execute which git in the terminal to know the location of your git executable. Open that directory & locate gitk inside the bin folder. Copy the path --- typically /usr/local/git/bin
Edit your ~/.bash_profile file to add the location of local git & gitk in the paths or, simply copy-paste from the sample written below.

Sample bash_profile:

# Enabling gitk
export PATH=/usr/local/git/bin:$PATH

If you don't have a bash_profile file and want to learn how to create one, then click here.

This step is relevant if you're using OS X v10.11 (El Capitan) or higher, and you run into an unknown color name “lime” error. Locate gitk executable (typically at /usr/local/bin/gitk), take a backup & open it in a text editor. Find all occurrences of lime in the file & replace them with "#99FF00".
Reload Bash: source ~/.bash_profile

Now, run gitk

2. Homebrew way

Updates - If you do not have homebrew on your Mac, get it installed first. It may require sudo privileges.

brew update
brew doctor
brew link git
added /usr/local/Cellar/git/2.4.0/bin to path, reload Bash, and run gitk
No luck yet? Proceed further.
Run which git and observe if Git is still linked to /usr/bin/git
If yes, then open the directory and locate the was a binary executable.
Take its backup. It may be save with a name git.bak and delete the original file
Reload the terminal - source ~/.bash_profile

Question 8

You can also get gitk with the git from MacPorts.

sudo port install git

Question 9

For macOS v10.14 (Mojave) users, I found this page very useful, particularly this suggestion:

/usr/bin/wish $(which gitk)

...without that, the window did not display correctly!

Question 10

I ended up doing brew info git.

Which gave me info that Git was cloned into: /usr/local/Cellar/git/1.9.0

So I just added: /usr/local/Cellar/git/1.9.0/bin to the beginning of my PATH environment variable.

Note: I don't know how to use Homebrew... I just want to get going quickly as I have other things to do... this basically gets gitk running for me, so I'm sticking to it for now (it is probably not the way to work with Homebrew though).

Question 11

If you happen to already have Fink installed, this worked for me on OS X v10.10.5 (Yosemite):

fink install git

Note that as a side effect, other Git commands are also using the newer Git version (2.5.1) installed by Fink, rather than the version from Apple (2.3.2), which is still there, but preempted by my $PATH.

Question 12

First you need to check which version of Git you are running. The one installed with Homebrew should be running on /usr/local/bin/git. You can verify this from a terminal using:

which git

In case Git shows up on a different directory, you need to run this from a terminal to add it to your path:

echo export PATH='/usr/local/bin:$PATH' >> ~/.bash_profile

After that, you can close and open again your terminal or just run:

source ~/.bash_profile

And voilà! In case you are running on OS X v10.9 (Mavericks) you might need to install XQuartz.

Question 13

If, like me, you have Sourcetree installed, but want to use gitk as well, you can use the version that comes with Sourcetree's embedded version of Git.

Sourcetree's version of Git (and thus gitk) is here:

For Windows:

C:\Users\User\AppData\Local\Atlassian\SourceTree\git_local\bin\git.exe

or

%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Atlassian\SourceTree\git_local\bin

For Mac:

/Applications/SourceTree.app/Contents/Resources/git_local/bin

In that directory, you'll find a gitk executable.

Thanks to @Adrian for the comment which alerted me to this.

Question 14

I had the same problem on Mac 10.7.5 with Git version 1.7.12.4.

When I ran gitk, I got an error:

"Error in startup script: expected version number but got "Git-37)" while executing
"package vcompare $git_version "1.6.6.2""
invoked from within
"if {[package vcompare $git_version "1.6.6.2"] >= 0} {
set show_notes "--show-notes"
}"
(file "/usr/bin/gitk" line 11587)

When I looked at the code in gitk I saw the line that sets the version.

set git_version [join [lrange [split [lindex [exec git version] end] .] 0 2] .]

This somehow parsed the git version results to Git-37 instead of 1.7.12.4

I just replaced the git_version line with:

set git_version "1.7.12.4"