Installing GitKraken on Fedora 27

GitKraken is a full-featured graphical Git client with support for multiple platforms. Given that I’m trying to live a multi-platform life, it made sense for me to give this a try and see whether it is worth making part of my (evolving and updated) multi-platform toolbelt. Along the way, though, I found that GitKraken doesn’t provide an RPM package for Fedora, and that the installation isn’t as straightforward as one might hope. I’m documenting the procedure here in the hope of helping others.

First, download the latest release of GitKraken. You can do this via the terminal with this command:

curl -LO https://release.gitkraken.com/linux/gitkraken-amd64.tar.gz

Extract the contents of the GitKraken download into its own directory under /opt using this command (you can use a different directory if you like, but I prefer to install third-party applications like this under /opt):

sudo tar -C /opt -xvf gitkraken-amd64.tar.gz

This will extract everything into /opt/gitkraken.

Next, you’ll create a symbolic link to an existing library to fix an error with GitKraken when running on Fedora (this is documented here):

sudo ln -s /usr/lib64/libcurl.so.4 /usr/lib64/libcurl-gnutls.so.4

Once this is done, you could just run /opt/gitkraken/gitkraken from the Terminal and GitKraken would fire up.

However, you may find it easier to create a desktop launcher for GitKraken. Before you do that, download an icon for the app (there is no icon file distributed in the download). One suggested icon can be found here; just copy that image into /opt/gitkraken and make note of the filename you use (for the purposes of this article, I’ll assume it’s named icon.png. Yes, I know, I’m very creative).

Now create the file /usr/share/applications/gitkraken.desktop and put these contents into the file:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=GitKraken
Comment=Graphical Git client
Exec=/opt/gitkraken/gitkraken
Icon=/opt/gitkraken/icon.png
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Encoding=UTF-8
Categories=Utility;Development;

If you named the icon you downloaded something other than icon.png, be sure to adjust the “Icon=” line in the file accordingly. Save that file and within a few moments you should have a GitKraken desktop launcher ready to roll.

A couple additional notes of which to be aware:

• GitKraken requires that you create a GitKraken account or link GitKraken to your GitHub account. This is an annoyance, but fortunately a minor one.
• I noted that GitKraken has some issues connecting to GitHub, GitLab, and other online services with a very generic and non-descriptive error. I haven’t yet found a workaround for the issue.

Credit

The source for the gitkraken.desktop, the suggested icon, and other useful information was taken from this GitHub Gist.

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