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I just started using git, and because I tend to live in emacs, I want to use one of the emacs integration packages. Looking at this list, I see that there are a lot of packages available, but the blurbs for each of them don't explain very much about their capabilities, especially since I don't know git very well.

Which git modes for emacs have you used, and what are the advantages and disadvantages of each?

Dan
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I've tried to describe these changes in my article about Emacs/Git integration.

There are following major modes: git-emacs is basic mode, that provides access to most of commands, but sometime not so handy in use. Egg - good mode, but not actively developed (imho). Magit - is most advanced comparing to other modes, and has modular architecture to extend it, so it possible to add different extensions, such as git-svn, etc. And it developed very actively with good community, documentation, etc.

All other modes are mostly add-ons to existing modes, or implement only limited functionality, that often available in other modes (for example, gitsum's functionality is available in magit)

Alex Ott
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I started with egg as it was said it's a fork of magit with some "extra" features. It was quite good but some operations like clone, push, and pull had to be done using shell commands.

Then recently I've turned to magit because I've found out that it has nice handling of pushing and pulling. It reports what changes have to be pushed, and if some interaction occurred with a remote repository it reports that some changes are yet to fetch. Also it seems to be still under active development as opposite to egg which seems to be abandoned.

I'm quite happy with magit now, but I still sometimes fall back to the command line because I'm still learning it. Also I'm not an expert in git itself because I started to use it only a year ago.

Rajish
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    Yes, in some days, Egg was better, because magit's development was staled. But last 2 years, magit's development is very active... – Alex Ott Sep 09 '11 at 13:42
  • I essentially never push or pull, just stage and commit. Would you still recommend `magit` if I would never use the network features? – Dan Sep 10 '11 at 02:57
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    Well, `egg` seems to have nicer log tree than `magit`. Also the major keybindings are visible right in front of you. I have found myself checking out `C-h m` quite often in `magit`. This problem will disappear when I learn to use it, I hope. So for start `egg` is nicer, then I thing you will turn to `magit`. (This path looks exactly like mine :) ) – Rajish Sep 11 '11 at 09:15