You already can squash commits easily in the Journal.

90% of the SmartGit updates will be downloaded in the background, e.g. from 17.1.0 to 17.1.1. They will be applied unnoticable by restarting SmartGit. Only if some files outside the *.jar files have to be replaced, e.g. when updating from 17.0.* to 17.1.*, a longer "genuine" update is performed. This "genuine" update process only takes a long time on Windows and is built to be as robust as possible, e.g. instead of directly messing with the existing installation, it creates a second one parallel to the current one and later simply renames the directories and removes the old directory structure. This takes longer, but has the advantage of keeping a working directory structure as long as possible.

In the preferences, page "SmartGit updates". Note, that according to the license agreement the non-commercial license, if not updated regularly, might stop working.

SmartGit 18.1 preview 1 will have the option to configure the times globally

You already can open, e.g. the blame for a certain file using command line parameters: http://www.syntevo.com/doc/display/SG/Command-Line+Options

You can compare any 2 commits in the log by selecting both. Here, just select the commits where develop and your feature branch point to.

With a fixed format it could be configured like that:

What options you would need? Would an external tool be sufficient for you?

Should be available in 17.1.1.

The SWT API to set certain colors improves continuously, but does not yet allow to configure every control or part of a control.