17 comments

  • Neil Spurgeon, 3 days ago

    This is killer! I really like that it doesn't try to "abstract" git and you can use almost the exact same workflow as you would with code.

    12 points
  • Aaron Wears a hatAaron Wears a hat, 2 days ago

    This is purely my opinion, but I feel a modern digital designer should learn git, not just learn the bad git workflow habits that a GUI-only user ends up with. You'll integrate far better with an agency, and have an improved understanding of how version controlling works.

    These days, it pays for a designer to have a level of development workflow under their belt. We're not in a single-hat world any more, you'll end up having to wear a full stack of hats some day if you aren't already.

    5 points
    • Mathieu Dutour, 2 days ago

      I totally agree! But you still need something to make your sketch files usable in git. That’s what Kactus is doing. Also I feel that a GUI is probably a good place to start instead of giving up because of a too steep learning curve :)

      1 point
      • Marijn ScholtusMarijn Scholtus, 2 days ago

        That is what the Kactus CLI is doing, but is the Kactus app a hard requirement to make the workflow work? I’d much rather do everything from the command line and have watch scripts do the heavy lifting. Is that a feasible route?

        1 point
        • Mathieu Dutour, 1 day ago

          Yes of course, you can check out the “kactus-io/kactus-cli” repo, that’s what Kactus uses under the hood. Not too much documentation yet but open an issue on the repo and I’ll answer your questions if any :)

          0 points
  • andrea s, 2 days ago

    looks great! does it works for other git services or self hosted ones?

    1 point
    • Joshua TurnerJoshua Turner, 1 day ago

      Looks like it's only GitHub, at least for now.

      0 points
    • Neil Spurgeon, 1 day ago

      If you're comfortable with the command line you add can add whatever service you want as a remote and then just push from there.

      1 point
  • Joshua TurnerJoshua Turner, 2 days ago

    So, I'm a bit concerned about this.

    This appears to be heavily built on the GitHub Desktop Client, which in and of itself isn't a problem, but I wonder if releasing the software in a commercial environment would be.

    Also, less of an issue (although maybe more relevant to DN), is that the landing page appears to be largely copied from that same GitHub Desktop Client, even the icons. Which again, isn't earth shattering, it just feels very disingenuous when viewed all together.

    This of course isn't to say that real work didn't go into this project - I'd love to be able to bring proper version control into my sketch files without the addition of yet another tool.

    1 point
    • Mathieu Dutour, 2 days ago

      you are right, Kactus is a fork of GitHub Desktop. Its license is MIT so it’s perfectly fine to create a commercial project out of it. Kactus is also release under the MIT license

      1 point
  • Ch'an Armstrong, 8 minutes ago

    Looking forward to trying this!

    0 points
  • Maximilian DahlMaximilian Dahl, 10 hours ago

    Now I am confused. Kaktus is a lighter version of Abstract?

    0 points
    • Lucas LazaroLucas Lazaro, 1 minute ago

      The approach is different because it integrates directly with your Github repository. Abstract still does not integrate with GitHub (but probably will).

      0 points
  • Cristian MoiseiCristian Moisei, 1 day ago

    How do you 'push' from sketch to the repo?

    0 points
    • Lucas LazaroLucas Lazaro, 22 hours ago

      Their GUI client it works pretty much like GIT desktop client would, after you login and provide access to your repositories you can choose a local repository (containing your sketch file) and it will add a directory with the same name of your sketch file with the assets and a .json (that probably does the control version magic). And then you can push by pressing a button.

      0 points