GitHub introduces Windows client

GitHub for Windows includes all basic features such as browsing and cloning repositories
Source: GitHub

The newly released GitHub for Windows is a native Windows client for the popular code hosting platform. The client is supposed to lower the barrier of entry to the service for Windows users, who already comprise around half of the traffic for GitHub's site.

GitHub for Windows runs on Windows XP, Vista, 7 and 8. The tool will automatically update itself and provides a graphical interface to the most important functions of the service, including the cloning of repositories, branching and committing changes. The features of the Windows version are comparable to the Mac OS X client that was released last year.

The client is written in C# and uses several open source libraries under the hood. Former Microsoft developer Phil Haack, who is now working for GitHub, was part of the development team and has written about the details of the implementation and how the application interacts with Git on his blog. While at Microsoft, Haack was responsible for the development of ASP.NET MVC and NuGet.

GitHub currently has over 1.6 million users with 2.8 million repositories and the company hopes that the new Windows client will increase the number of enterprise users of the platform. GitHub finances itself by selling commercial features such as the ability to host proprietary code in private repositories.

GitHub for Windows is not open source, but it is free to download and use.

(fab)