Thursday, December 01, 2016

Mobile Git

I've used the Textastic source code editor iOS app on my phone and tablet for quite a while. I don't do a lot of heavy editing with it, but it's handy when I'm thinking about code and want to look at how something is implemented. (Textastic is also available on the Mac, but I've never tried that version. I have plenty of editors there, and I prefer ones that are also available on Windows.)

One of the limitations was that it wouldn't pull directly from Git. It does pull from Dropbox though, so I ended up keeping a copy of my source code there. But that had a few drawbacks. First, I had to remember to update the Dropbox copy of the code. Second to update the Textastic version I had to download the entire source, which could be slow depending on the connection.

Recently I discovered the Working Copy Git iOS app which lets you clone Git repos to your phone or tablet. You can even commit changes, although I generally wouldn't want to do that when I couldn't test the changes. It would be ok for documentation. It has its own editor, but even better it uses new iOS features to let you access the files from other editors, like Textastic.

Now, not only do I have easily updated offline access to my source code, I have offline access to my Git history.

One minor disappointment was that neither of these apps has syntax highlighting for TypeScript. I was a bit surprised because Typescript seems as popular as some of the other languages they include. Textastic does support Textmate bundles so in theory you could add it that way, but it didn't sound easy so I haven't bothered yet. It would be easier (for me!) if they just included it out of the box.

Unfortunately for Android users, both of these apps appear to be iOS only. If you know of good Android alternatives, let us know in the comments.