Wikipedia

Magit

Magit
Original authorMarius Vollmer
DevelopersJonas Bernoulli, Kyle Meyer, and Noam Postavsky
Stable release
4.5.0[1] Edit this on Wikidata / 3 January 2026; 15 days ago (3 January 2026)
Repositorygithub.com/magit/magit
Written inEmacs Lisp
Type
  • Git client
  • Text editor plugin
LicenseGPL-3.0-or-later
Websitemagit.vc

Magit (/ˈmædʒɪt/ MA-jit or /ˈmʌɡɪt/ MUH-git[2]) is a Git version control interface for GNU Emacs.[3] It is written in Emacs Lisp and distributed through the MELPA package repository,[4] where it is the most-downloaded non-library package, with over 4.3 million downloads as of September 2024.[5]

Like many graphical user interfaces, Magit provides a visual interface to represent version control actions; however, it uses a keyboard-centric model, and also functions as a text-based user interface.[a] The issue of key-memorization is mitigated through use of a popup menu which displays the actions available to the user[6] — serving as a mnemonic aid.[7]

History

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Magit was created by Marius Vollmer in 2008,[8] with Jonas Bernoulli assuming the role of maintainer in 2013.[9] Since its release, Magit has seen a high degree of community involvement, with 350 individuals[10] having contributed code to this free software project as of September 2020.

In 2018 Magit underwent a Kickstarter funding campaign[11] which aimed to fund the maintainer for a year of work. The fundraising was successful and resulted in the project being the 27th most funded software project on Kickstarter.[12] Since the Kickstarter funded period expired donations are encouraged to support the authors development via direct payments, GitHub's sponsorship program and various other crowdfunding services.[13]

Functionality

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A Magit buffer displaying the Emacs git repository's log

Magit aims to encapsulate the entire functionality of Git,[14] and has interfaces for workflows such as:[15]

  • Cloning a repository, and fetching/pulling from it
  • Staging, unstaging, and discarding changes in the worktree
  • Creating commits and pushing them to a remote
  • Creating branches, and either merging or rebasing onto them
    • Magit makes use of Emacs' Ediff to provide 3-way-merge functionality
  • Browsing and bisecting the commit history
  • Creating and applying patches
  • Adding notes and tags to commits

Forges

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Magit's Forge provides integration with a number of forges,[16] namely GitHub and GitLab.[17]

Partial support is also listed for: Gitea, Gogs, Bitbucket, Gitweb, Cgit, StGit and SourceHut.

Forge currently allows for[18]

  • Fetching topics and notifications
  • Listing topics, issues, pull-requests, notifications, and repositories
  • Creating issues, pull-requests (PRs), PR from an issue, PR reviews, and forks

Reception

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Magit is favourably covered in a number of blog posts and tutorials and a talk delivered by former Emacs' maintainer John Wiegley.[19][20][21] It is considered by some to be a "killer app" for Emacs.[22]

Magit is included by default in the Emacs configuration frameworks Spacemacs and Doom Emacs.[23][24]

There has been interest in including Magit as a built-in feature package in Emacs, but there are issues with obtaining FSF copyright assignment from all contributors to the project.[25]

Notes

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  1. ^ In part this is a consequence of being designed for GNU Emacs, which itself can operate as a TUI.

References

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  1. ^ "[NonGNU ELPA] Magit version 4.5.0". 3 January 2026. Retrieved 3 January 2026.
  2. ^ "How to pronounce Magit? (Magit User Manual)". magit.vc. Retrieved 2024-09-15.
  3. ^ Corbet, Jonathan (July 12, 2017). "Emacs and Magit". LWN.net.
  4. ^ "magit". Milkypostman's Emacs Lisp Package Archive. Retrieved 2020-09-20.
  5. ^ "Current List of Packages". Milkypostman's Emacs Lisp Package Archive. Retrieved 2024-09-15.
  6. ^ "Transient commands". GitHub. Retrieved 2020-09-17.
  7. ^ Bernoulli, Jonas (2017-09-01). "Magit, the magical Git interface". EmacsAir.
  8. ^ "magit/magit.el". GitHub. Retrieved 2020-09-17.
  9. ^ "Magit 1.4.0 Release Notes". GitHub. 2015-07-01. Retrieved 2020-09-20.
  10. ^ "GitStats - magit". magit.vc. Retrieved 2022-03-08.
  11. ^ "It's Magit! The magical Git client". Kickstarter. 2 October 2018.
  12. ^ "Discover » Technology / Software » Most Funded — Kickstarter". Retrieved 2020-09-17.
  13. ^ "Please help making it better".
  14. ^ Bernoulli, Jonas. "It's Magit! A Git Porcelain inside Emacs". magit.vc. Retrieved 2022-01-02.
  15. ^ "Top (Magit User Manual)". magit.vc.
  16. ^ Heartman, Thomas (16 March 2020). "Improve your workflow with Forge".
  17. ^ "Forge User and Developer Manual". magit.vc.
  18. ^ "Usage (Forge User and Developer Manual)". magit.vc.
  19. ^ Patil, Sachin. "How to use Magit to manage Git projects". opensource.com.
  20. ^ Bachmann, Gunther. "Magit – A textual git interface". itemis.
  21. ^ Wiegley, John (January 2019). "It's Magit!". YouTube.
  22. ^ Corbet, Jonathan (2017-07-12). "Emacs and Magit". LWN.net. Retrieved 2026-01-12.
  23. ^ "Spacemacs - source control layer". GitHub. Retrieved 2020-09-19.
  24. ^ "Doom Emacs - default modules file". GitHub. Retrieved 2020-09-19.
  25. ^ Stallman, Richard (5 July 2017). "Re: In support of Jonas Bernoulli's Magit". emacs-devel (Mailing list). Retrieved 2020-09-19.
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