DiffDino

A fast, cross-platform desktop Git client.

🌐 Website: gitbench.builtbyzee.com

DiffDino is a lightweight Git GUI built on .NET 10 with a custom GPU-accelerated UI and compiled to a native executable (Native AOT) — no runtime to install, quick to launch.

Features

• Branches — local and remote branches grouped into folders, with checkout, rename, delete, merge, rebase, and fast-forward from the context menu.
• Local changes — stage/unstage by file or folder, discard, stash, and an inline diff view.
• History, stashes, worktrees & submodules — browse commits and manage the bits a real repo actually has.
• Multiple repositories — organize repos into collapsible groups in the sidebar.
• Light & dark themes.
• Auto-updates — the app checks GitHub Releases on launch and offers a one-click restart when a new version is available (powered by Velopack).

Installation

Head to gitbench.builtbyzee.com or grab the build for your platform directly from the latest release:

• Windows — run the Setup.exe installer (or use the portable build).
• macOS (Apple Silicon & Intel) — open the .pkg / app bundle.
• Linux — run the .AppImage.

Once installed, DiffDino keeps itself up to date automatically — when an update is ready it shows a banner, and clicking Restart applies it.

DiffDino drives the git command line, so make sure Git is installed and on your PATH.

Building from source

You'll need the .NET 10 SDK and Git.

# Clone with submodules (the UI framework and the tree-sitter bindings are submodules)
git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/Zeejfps/GitBench.git
cd GitBench

# If you already cloned without --recurse-submodules:
git submodule update --init --recursive

# One-time: build the native tree-sitter libraries (needs git and a C compiler)
dotnet run scripts/build-native.cs

# Build
dotnet build GitBench.sln

# Run
dotnet run --project GitBench/GitBench.csproj

The native tree-sitter step

external/cs_tree_sitter ships C# bindings for tree-sitter but not the native libraries they load — those are built from pinned upstream sources rather than checked in. scripts/build-native.cs wraps dotnet run external/cs_tree_sitter/native/build.cs, which clones tree-sitter and the grammars on its first run and writes external/cs_tree_sitter/native/artifacts/<rid>/. It takes the same arguments — --clean, and --target <rid> to cross-build.

Run it once per clone, and again after a build.cs pin moves. Until you do, dotnet build fails at CheckNativeArtifacts naming the command, and so does dotnet test — the test project references the app. It is not run from MSBuild on purpose: it needs the network.

external/cs_tree_sitter is ours to edit, not a vendored third-party drop. A missing ts_* declaration, a wrapper convenience, anything needing unsafe, or build support for a RID we ship belongs there — and changing it means two commits, one in the submodule and one bumping the pointer here.

Auto-update only works in an installed build, so a local dotnet run simply skips the update check.

Releases

Releases are produced by the release workflow: pushing a SemVer tag (e.g. v1.2.3) builds a Native AOT executable per platform, packages it with Velopack, and publishes the installers and update feed to GitHub Releases.

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome — head to the issue tracker to report a bug or suggest a feature.

Support

If DiffDino is useful to you, you can support its development:

License

DiffDino's own source is open source under the MIT License. The bundled UI framework (ENV Game Framework) is a separate dependency and is not yet covered by this license.