You have read Marc's second paragraph? What would be the advantage if SmartGit would be turned into SourceTree - we could not cope with the free original.

BTW, what exactly should be changed beside the repositories view?

Thanks. Unfortunately, this looks like a total rework, no simple addition. Hard to sell for users that mostly tend to like sticking with the existing.

This seems like a different request. Please post it separately.

What connection type you are using? If system SSH, then you have not configured it correctly.

Does anybody has a good suggestion how to change from the current state with groups? We are happy to have abandoned projects because a lot of users did not understand this concept. What tiny change we should do to make you happy and keep it right for other users, too?

The next 8.1 preview build will allow to skip such few common and expected dialogs.

You already can do that, e.g. by prefixing the pattern with a !, e.g. !*.png will not show any *.png file.