Tip from the team: debugging Sourcetree

[#1]

Supported Platforms

• macOS
• Windows

If you're reading this and it's not just educational… we know you're unhappy right now and apologize for that  We're dedicated to improving your Sourcetree experience.

We need your valuable feedback though to help narrow down the problem and ship a fix that much faster. Here are some high level details on what we've already built into Sourcetree to aid in flipping the switch from:

macOS

Visit the Advanced preferences pane and turn on the Debug menu to make it easier to access options and logs. As noted, some changes (such as the log level) require you to restart the app for them to take effect.

Once the Debug menu is enabled, you can:

• Change several logging settings
• Open up debug monitors and inspectors to see what's going on
  
• Use the Tasks Monitor to help determine what actions are being run in response to a particular click
• Use the Network Monitor to help determine what activity is generating traffic unexpectedly, such as populating the remote repositories list in the background
  
  

Windows

It's even easier to get started finding behind the scenes activity on Windows via the Process Log under the Tools menu. When you open it, you'll see data presented like so:

 To enable logging in general for the app you'll need to edit %localappdata%\SourceTree\app-{version}\log4net.config and set the value to DEBUG. (more details) Once you've done that you'll find the output in %localappdata%\Atlassian\SourceTree\sourcetree.log. 

Despite the playful gifs and useful functionality we built in, it's never fun to run into a problem with tools you depend on day in and day out. We appreciate you taking the time to learn what's available to help file the most informative and actionable tickets possible.

Thank you for your help in eliminating those pesky bugs!

Note: debug data is generated only a when monitor is open and none of it is ever transmitted off your machine

Additional Reading:

• Filing effective bug reports
• Sourcetree public bug tracker (macOS)
• Sourcetree public bug tracker (Windows)

[Angel Cervera Claudio]

Come on!!! Still not available for Linux?!!

• https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/SRCTREE-2991
• https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Sourcetree-questions/SourceTree-for-Linux/qaq-p/255473 with more of 2K likes and hundreds of people commenting.

And

• https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Sourcetree-questions/Source-Tree-Linux/qaq-p/436450
• https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Sourcetree-questions/SourceTree-Linux/qaq-p/600551
• https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Sourcetree-questions/SourceTree-for-Linux-OS/qaq-p/74091

[Ian Daintith]

Guys, I appreciate you want to fix the bugs but a lot of them are so fundamental. Like the commit button sometimes works, sometimes doesn't. Have to click it twice, three times. You have a rock solid Git layer underneath a GUI. All that is needed is to get the presentation right. Rather than getting your users to do testing, maybe look at what more your test department and QA can do. 

[Bob Helm]

I had to uninstall it. I upgraded to the latest some weeks back and it wouldn't launch. I uninstalled and reinstalled several times, and it still wouldn't launch. It kept asking me to upgrade .NET Framework. I did that, still no dice. Is that fixed with the latest?

[morungos]

Thanks for this, and I've tried it. SourceTree still goes to 100% on the Mac, and when I open the log there's a bunch of 429 responses for Pipelines. We've seen an association with Pipelines for this issue. Maybe the 429s are making SourceTree spin internally? Perhaps queuing to try again? 

[James Clark]

Know what's a great way to find deep-rooted bugs? Porting to another platform! Challenge your assumptions about how the OS and GUI toolkit should behave and you might discover the cause of all these crashes...

[Doug C. Hardester]

Debug -> Open Logs Folder doesn't even work. Come on guys.

[Doug C. Hardester]

On Mac, I get the rainbow cursor constantly. It's the only app I use that I know it doesn't (necessarily) mean it's crashed, you just have to go do something else for awhile and then it'll work again. Rinse and repeat for every action.

On Windows (10), a simple click on a file and the app thinks you're holding down and dragging. I have to slowly double click (so as not to open) a file to begin every selection process.

It really seems to me like Atlassian could care less about Sourcetree. It could be an app that gives Bitbucket a great advantage over competitors but, if anything, it's an example of why people shouldn't trust them.

[bgannin]

@morungos There is a fix for cache misses with Pipelines in 2.7.4. Please file a ticket if you experience problems still.

[Nicholas Lea]

We finally found the fix our massive performance problems with source tree. (taking 20mins to commit even a single file).  It turned out to be a conflict with the Antivirus that was blocking everything. 

A guide for configuring Antivirus programs to avoid performance issues would be nice.

[Mike Behnke]

I stopped use SourceTree recently due to serious performance issues. Basically getting the rainbow beachball for even really simple operations. I still like the idea of having a GUI for visualizing branches and such, but I've found it was more of a crutch than a necessary tool. 

[Gonchik Tsymzhitov]

Thank you for that one, that's needful to our end users

[Mark Schneider]

Thanks, Nicholas.  I too found the problem to be with Antivirus.