I wouldn’t mind having a refresh button instead of auto refresh/watch for such a remote repository. 

Currently, if you use SmartGit on a network mounted filesystem it wont correctly report changes anyway, you have to reopen the repository to see them.

This isn’t a huge deal, however, and the only thing missing to get stuff done in a timely manner is the remote execution of git commands

I get that, that’s why i added opt-in at the end. (although you could argue that commit messages can be arbitrarily long too…)

i sit on a 4k screen, at a certain window size it’s mostly empty space in the log window

it could also have a window size threshold before it is displayed by default

While writing this i was cleaning a set of 185 commits, and although in total 70 files are edited, each commit only touches 1 to 3. So in trying to somewhat sort them to be able to merge branches i know the changes of, i would appreciate any additional information that lets me easily recognize specific commits. The commit message is just not catchy enough to the eye. 

Also, once an interactive rebase is started, any other log window doesn’t update the changes anymore, when the commit selection is changed, which makes it basically impossible to check again if i’m moving the correct commit. 

Just doing the interactive rebase anyway or move commits directly in the graph without using the interactive rebase window, to see if it fails, is just not feasible because each rebase takes ages to complete. 

As a workaround i opened several log windows for each of the files i was currently interested in, just to search for their commit message and date – by eye – in the repository log. 

If you will, the interactive rebase window should then have this feature too. 

It’s just good visual aid. 

In my mind using SmartGit is trying to be better than plain git. 

It certainly is in many ways and this could be another one of them.