13 ms·

Meld for Macs

289 points by niedzielski 4y ago

smoldesu 4y ago
Meld is excellent, cool to see a port for Mac too!
WalterGR 4y ago
How does it compare to WinMerge? I haven't found a tool on any platform that beats it. In fact, I use Wine on my Mac specifically so I can use WinMerge.
- BugsJustFindMe 4y ago
  I find Meld's UI more pleasant.
- thebruce87m 4y ago
  I’ve used both and I found Meld fits my needs in Linux in the same way that WinMerge did in windows.
  - WalterGR 4y ago
    Which would you use if you could run WinMerge seamlessly in Linux or Meld seamlessly in Windows?
    - thebruce87m 4y ago
      Meld does support windows. Meld doesn’t feel “native” in windows, or it didn’t 5+ years ago when I used it. It’s been so long since I’ve used windows daily that I can’t even remember any significant difference between the two to be honest.
- AshamedCaptain 4y ago
  I still use WinMerge under desktop Linux. Has quite some features and importantly it's fast (unlike anything Python...).
- gpvos 4y ago
  kdiff3 easily beats it, if only for its 3-way merge, manual line alignment option and general robustness.
  - WalterGR 4y ago
    > kdiff3 easily beats it Gonna have to agree to (vehemently) disagree on that. :)
    - gpvos 4y ago
      Has WinMerge quadrupled its number of features in the last decade then? kdiff3 was such a relief, also for reliability and speed.
      - WalterGR 4y ago
        > Has WinMerge quadrupled its number of features in the last decade then? It has not. I have both installed. WinMerge is the superior program. It has 3-way merge, among many, many other features. Are you thinking of WinDiff? https://adamtheautomator.com/windiff/ https://adamtheautomator.com/windiff/ I'm talking about WinMerge: https://winmerge.org/?lang=en https://winmerge.org/?lang=en
        gpvos 4y ago
        Looks like it was WinDiff indeed. Sorry. kdiff3 has the advantage that it also works on Linux etc. though.
        WalterGR 4y ago
        Goalposts. WinMerge works fine via Wine.
BugsJustFindMe 4y ago
Meld is great. It has my favorite clean UI of any 3-way diff/merge tool, but the horrendous performance on Mac because of GTK3 makes it hard to use sometimes.
- berkut 4y ago
  It has fairly bad performance in UI-terms in my experience on Linux as well with large files, I think because it's written in Python, so things like highlighting take ages...
ruined 4y ago
yes, it's in homebrew
sgarrity 4y ago
I assumed this was a "more native" port of Meld to macOS, as it has been available for Mac for a while. I've been using the version installed via `brew`. It appears this is the same version (the page says "Homebrew now installs Meld for OSX"). The macOS integration is a bit klunky (really feels like a non-native app), but this remains my preferred visual diff app. Thanks to those who make it and maintain the macOS port.
- Klonoar 4y ago
  At a glance I'd suspect it's a GTK app. Am I correct...? I recall that there's been a lot of work on GTK4/macOS. Maybe that'll come into play some day.
  - techwizrd 4y ago
    Meld is a Gtk app. I like it enough that I choose to use it on Linux (for personal) and on macOS (for work).
m12k 4y ago
One of the things I like in P4Merge is having 4 panes - the two versions, their common ancestor, and the final merge result. Can you get all these in Meld as well?
- ulrikrasmussen 4y ago
  P4merge is my favorite merge tool for this reason. It's also really good at solving whitespace conflicts for you. I became familiar with it at a previous job that used perforce, and I have just kept using it with git. It's free to download, although you have to fill out an annoying form.
- WalterGR 4y ago
  I've always been puzzled by 4-way merge not being more common. Support is quite rare. KDiff3 is another tool that supports it.
  - hprotagonist 4y ago
    KDiff3 is so consistently good and itself. I’ve been using it for ever; i don't expect to stop.
    - gpvos 4y ago
      Beyond Compare (not free) seems to have all kdiff3's features, plus some nice features for comparing tables (CSV or Excel) (although you need to tweak the defaults to make them actually useful). Also, it has syntax highlighting in its diff view, and I find its directory diff nicer than kdiff3's. I haven't used it for merging yet though; although it has three-way merge, I just am more familiar with kdiff3 and trust it since I've been using it for more than 20 years now.
  - eastbound 4y ago
    I’ve always been puzzled by 3-way merge being remotely common. It’s almost “Here’s your latest file on two branches, good luck!” — There is obviously one leg missing but dare pointing it to a developer and he will tell you “But we have everything there” and when you draw a graph to explain the conceptual problem, “Ok but in general the two ancestors are common.” A fortnight later, they wreck a merge and they spend their afternoon re-merging conflicts they’ve already had. Such people almost always use the git tools provided in IntelliJ.
butterguns 4y ago
Would love to know how it compares to Beyond Compare, which is the tool I've been using for the last decade on the Mac
- unmole 4y ago
  Beyond Compare is significantly better.
jamesfmilne 4y ago
Beyond Compare is a pretty good diff/merge tool that runs natively on macOS. Sure it's UI is slightly non-native too. https://www.scootersoftware.com/ https://www.scootersoftware.com/
- lkxijlewlf 4y ago
  I love love Beyond Compare. It's been my go to diff tool for years.
- zikohh 4y ago
  Big fan of beyond compare
- donatj 4y ago
  I love and highly recommend Beyond Compare. That being said, the Mac version could use a little love of late. They're a small team so I mean… priorities I guess…
- aninteger 4y ago
  I suppose this is because it's written in FreePascal using Qt.
  - badsectoracula 4y ago
    AFAIK it is written in Lazarus/LCL which in addition to the Qt backend it also has a native Cocoa backend. I wonder if the Qt backend is still better than the native Cocoa backend though - it used to be the case some years ago as it was easier to interface with Carbon than Cocoa (Free Pascal got an entire new language mode - Objective Pascal - to be able to use Objective C objects directly to work with Cocoa) so for years most effort went on the Carbon backend until it was deprecated and removed for 64bit apps - but nowadays all work is on the Cocoa backend. Perhaps in the future BC will switch to the Cocoa backend and provide more "native" controls (and wont need to bundle Qt either).
- elromulous 4y ago
  I love BC. The merge view was such a revelation. If you've never used it, do yourself a favor and try it out.
roydivision 4y ago
I used to use this until I discovered vim has a built in diffing mode - vimdiff. I’d still be using Meld if vim wasn’t already so much part of my workflow.
selykg 4y ago
I really like https://kaleidoscope.app https://kaleidoscope.app It has a new release and is the most Mac-like of the various diff tools I've used.
- kstrauser 4y ago
  It's such a pretty app, but I can't bring myself to drop $150 for it.
  - corn13read 4y ago
  - msbarnett 4y ago
    Eh, for how much use I get out of a merge tool, $150 is pretty meaningless for the right tool. We're talking fractions of fractions of fractions of a penny per use over many years. If it makes my life better those kinds of tooling costs aren't even worth thinking about. That said, I haven't used the new Kaleidoscope (although I was a fan of their last version and happily used it for 8 years or so), and currently use Sublime Merge. Edit: someone care to explain to me why this completely innocuous comment on my personal philosophy of tool value is worthy of downvoting to -2?
    - 40four 4y ago
      I’m sure someone as experienced as you knows commenting about up/ down votes is explicitly against the guidelines. No worries though. No need to fret, just imagine those sad souls, and what most be going through their heads, as to find your comment offensive :) Maybe they were pushing back against the idea of paying money, for good quality software, that provides value to your life?!? Haha, joking of course. But seriously, I agree with you. If it is a tool that I use all the time, makes my life easier, and is of good quality… I’m happy to pay up for a license. I’ve spent way more than that on my favorite database GUI clients over the years. Money well spent, and the developers earned it. Happy to support them!
cibyr 4y ago
> If you want to donate, please donate to the original Meld project. Anyone know how to actually do that? I've not been able to find a donation link on the Meld website.
- Someone 4y ago
  https://discourse.gnome.org/t/support-donate-to-meld/6909 https://discourse.gnome.org/t/support-donate-to-meld/6909: “We usually don’t receive donations for specific GNOME projects, but we collect donations for the whole organization. You can donate to GNOME at Donate – GNOME 6 Thanks for your interest in helping!“ (donation link is https://www.gnome.org/donate/ https://www.gnome.org/donate/)
SeanLuke 4y ago
Fun Fact. FileMerge.app has remained essentially unchanged since it was introduced in NeXTSTEP (I think 3.2 or earlier) in the early 1990s.
- newaccount74 4y ago
  FileMerge is a complete app. There's nothing more that it needs to do. It's trivial to understand, there is no learning curve, and it is my go-to tool when I need to quickly diff two files or folders.
  - grishka 4y ago
    > FileMerge is a complete app. As are many other apps. Yet they keep getting redesigned and engulfed by endless feature creep because people gotta work on something.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- user3939382 4y ago
  Copyright on it is 1996
  - SeanLuke 4y ago
    FileMerge was released in NeXTSTEP 3.2, which came out in 1993. See for example: https://www.blackholeinc.com/Library/94%20Jan.html https://www.blackholeinc.com/Library/94%20Jan.html Indeed, I have it on my Turbo NeXTStation (3.2). Was it revised slightly for NeXTSTEP 4.0 (1996) perhaps?
- js2 4y ago
  It’s what I use for my diff tool with git. It’s available on the command line as opendiff.
- ryankshaw 4y ago
  yup. protip: Put this in your ~/.gitconfig [merge] tool = opendiff then next time you get a merge conflict, just do: `git mergetool` it will open xcode's FileMerge.app, which is the best mergetool I've ever used.
newaccount74 4y ago
If you are going through all the trouble to make a nice macOS build, why wouldn't you notarize it? I know that it's mostly security theather, but those scary warnings that Apple shows for software they haven't notarized must scare a lot of people away.
- Dangeranger 4y ago
  You need to sign the Apple Developer terms of service and pay $100 annually I believe. People who ascribe to the FLOSS ethos are often opposed to the terms and conditions Apple dictates.
kodisha 4y ago
I REALLY love the way merge tool works in IntelliJ IDEA. Is there some other tool out there that works in a similar way, and that good? (tho, typing idea . and doing a merge fix is not that bad)
- sanirank 4y ago
  I wish IntelliJ would sell git-only tool - their three way merge tool is the best I’ve used, and would gladly pay for a license.
  - kodisha 4y ago
    Actually, I think I answered my own question. That tool is so good because it leverages the entire eco-system of IDE it is running in. The resulting merge panel is as powerful as any editor window in the IDE. It has code inspections, it detects missing imports, it does everything. It might be the case that ripping the diff/merge tool out of the IDE would result in way inferior product than we get when we use it within the IDE.
    - sk0g 4y ago
      The only issue I have with it is that it doesn't provide breadcrumbs when diffing. If you've set it to collapse unchanged fragments, it can be hard to tell when a line is in another function, conditional block, etc. Otherwise, yeah it's amazing!
- alostpuppy 4y ago
  Agreed. The magic button the top have saved me dev years of time.
  - xwowsersx 4y ago
    Which magic button?
- xwowsersx 4y ago
  It's great. When I'm in a file in PyCharm or IntelliJ, I use ⌥⌘x (custom keymapping for select branch to compare) to select a branch to compare to and the diff is great.
destitude 4y ago
Makes me concerned when they still use the phrase "Mac/OSX" instead of the correct nomenclature "macOS".
kelahcim 4y ago
Sublime Merge (when it comes to git integration) is the best choice now - at least for me. Meld, on the other hand, is the best tool for comparing local copies and directories.
ibioes 4y ago
there is also diffuse merge tool, it's pretty good, it works on mac as well (I personally use it on fedora through flatpak)
jacobsenscott 4y ago
Shout out to Emacs Ediff - it can compare files, directories, buffers (open files), regions within buffers (selected text within files, and is version control aware.
- Dangeranger 4y ago
  Once I learned to use Ediff with Magit there was no going back. It has been consistently the quickest and easiest thing for solving complicated merges of many files in a rebase.
- onetom 4y ago
  Any experience with vdiff? https://github.com/justbur/emacs-vdiff https://github.com/justbur/emacs-vdiff How does it fare compared to ediff?
  - jacobsenscott 4y ago
    Never used it. I suppose if you are fond of vimdiff, but migrating to emacs it might be nice.
dummy_physicist 4y ago
I use neovim as mergetool and some ad hoc diff tasks, but I'm glad to see meld on Mac. It is the tool I recommend when I see someone struggling with git rebase conflicts (and not using using vim).
difflens 4y ago
Just plugging difflens here: https://github.com/marketplace/difflens https://github.com/marketplace/difflens If you work primarily with frontend technologies and want a syntax aware diff on GitHub PRs, difflens might be right up your alley! Standalone Mac and Windows apps are coming out soon.
wnolens 4y ago
Strange, I haven't used a merge tool in 2-3 years. old job: Changes staged locally for 2-3 weeks sometimes. Team-specific branches, integrating into the mainline periodically.. eventually moved to several hundred devs committing to mainline. One monster repo Beyond Compare 2 was the only tool for the job simply for the ability to provide a manual hint (via spacebar) to align two version of the same file current company: never merge more than a line or two which I do with vim. Change sets only last max 1 week on my machine. We have 5-6 services (each in their own repo). 20 people committing amongst them all. I do wish our code review tool was better though. Perhaps I will take one of the suggestions from this thread and build a custom CR work flow.
beepbooptheory 4y ago
Feel so bad for Mac people, things we take for granted in GNU world need to undergo so much ceremony and packaging to get into the ecosystem there.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
ahwvd37js 4y ago
Kaleidoscope is def (pun intended) the prettiest diff'ing tool, but it is very sluggish on 1000+ line files. In those cases I use CompareMerge.
piskov 4y ago
Strange that no one mentioned Araxis merge https://www.araxis.com/merge/index.en https://www.araxis.com/merge/index.en
- lowbloodsugar 4y ago
  Life saver.
- 1over137 4y ago
  I use it on macOS. It's quite good!
- benjimouse 4y ago
  The problem with Araxis Merge is you have to pay for upgrades. Sure you don't "have to", but eventually it stops working for some reason and/or you get new machine, cant find the license key, and it's awkward so you end up having to buy a new one. I've used it for more than 15 years, and bought it 3-4 times. I honestly don't believe it's worth that, and I'm not going to buy it again. I would be willing to pay what they ask for a years license, to actually own it in perpetuity, only receiving updates when OS changes stop it functioning. As they won't offer that, I no longer use it.
chris_wot 4y ago
Oh, this is the greatest! The brew version of meld is quite out of date (still very functional). Don't know how I'd live without it...
ppljudge 4y ago
This is my favorite merge tool for years. Haven’t seen updates for the latest mac OS Mojave though
- WalterGR 4y ago
  ? The most recent version works on Mojave and is available via Homebrew.
onetom 4y ago
How do you evaluate diff tools, like this? Is there some common repository of merge conflicts, which one can use to gauge how well a certain tool fares?
- dev_tty01 4y ago
  If this doesn't exist, it should. Good idea.
gtest 4y ago
Honest question: I have been using emacs/vim for many years, and always just used the diff viewer shipped with them. Any reason to switch to these tools? Do they have some functionality not available in these old tools? I am, frankly, ignorant of what these tools provide.
- anitil 4y ago
  I really like vimdiff, but I belive it doesn't do folder diffs (whereas beyond compare does this well)
  - pfranz 4y ago
    Maybe my use-cases are too basic? I appreciate a good diff gui, but really like vimdiff more than almost all of the ones I've seen. For folders `diff -qr one/ two/` does everything I feel like I need. I love just filtering things with grep instead of trying to figure out however that tool wants to ignore specific changes.
ossusermivami 4y ago
I get confused by diff GUIs but I have been using "git-delta" https://github.com/dandavison/delta https://github.com/dandavison/delta as a pager of git and it's been wonderful so far (just for the syntax highlighting in diff) diffstatic is nice too and use it sparingly
mlatu 4y ago
i like meld. but i dont like how it takes ages to start on windows
harel 4y ago
Meld is one of the first things I make sure I have on a new Linux install. Usually good apps come out for Mac only and the likes of me go all "wot, no Linux version?" but today I learned that until today, Mac users might have said that on Meld.
- RMPR 4y ago
  > but today I learned that until today, Mac users might have said that on Meld. The same thing for KDE connect two days ago. I am not sure I totally agree with the feeling though, in fact, it's the opposite. Many apps I use on a daily basis are not available for Mac.
  - harel 4y ago
    I very recently learned that KDE Connect has a Gnome version. My comment was mostly said jokingly. I have been using Linux exclusively for the past 18 years or so. My only experience is seeing posts about Mac apps I think are cool, only to find later they only exist in the OSX world.
AltruisticGapHN 4y ago
Thank you for Meld for OSX, love it. Always used meld on Ubuntu as well. I love how simple and clear it is. Small UX/QOL improvement on OSX could be to remember the window's position and size between launches.
tmslnz 4y ago
I was moved by the message on the last GH release for Meld macOS. So tragic and sad, and I will pray for your brother Youssef. Dedicated to Osama If you use this software, please pray for my brother. https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/christchurch-shooting/111375038/osama-abu-kwaik-was-a-refugee-born-to-an-orphan-who-died-in-christchurch-the-city-he-loved https://github.com/yousseb/meld/releases/tag/osx-19 https://github.com/yousseb/meld/releases/tag/osx-19
manx 4y ago
I found it a bit frustrating that merge tools I used were never able to solve trivial merge conflicts automatically. So I built something myself: https://fdietze.github.io/blend https://fdietze.github.io/blend On that page you can paste your merge conflict and copy the automatically merged result, along with some useful diffs. I hope it helps someone else. So far it solves around 80% of my conflicts automatically.
- niedzielski 4y ago
  This is what I use in my ~/.gitconfig: [difftool "meld"] cmd = meld "$LOCAL" "$REMOTE" [mergetool "meld"] cmd = meld --auto-merge --output "$MERGED" "$LOCAL" "$BASE" "$REMOTE"
  - manx 4y ago
    As far as I understand, this only resolves conflicts, git can already resolve with it's line-based approach. I'm talking about conflicts within a single line, that a line based approach cannot solve.
    - niedzielski 4y ago
      Thanks! I wasn't understanding that before.

289 points by niedzielski 4y ago

Meld is excellent, cool to see a port for Mac too!

How does it compare to WinMerge? I haven't found a tool on any platform that beats it. In fact, I use Wine on my Mac specifically so I can use WinMerge.

BugsJustFindMe 4y ago
I find Meld's UI more pleasant.
thebruce87m 4y ago
I’ve used both and I found Meld fits my needs in Linux in the same way that WinMerge did in windows.
- WalterGR 4y ago
  Which would you use if you could run WinMerge seamlessly in Linux or Meld seamlessly in Windows?
  - thebruce87m 4y ago
    Meld does support windows. Meld doesn’t feel “native” in windows, or it didn’t 5+ years ago when I used it. It’s been so long since I’ve used windows daily that I can’t even remember any significant difference between the two to be honest.
AshamedCaptain 4y ago
I still use WinMerge under desktop Linux. Has quite some features and importantly it's fast (unlike anything Python...).
gpvos 4y ago
kdiff3 easily beats it, if only for its 3-way merge, manual line alignment option and general robustness.
- WalterGR 4y ago
  > kdiff3 easily beats it Gonna have to agree to (vehemently) disagree on that. :)
  - gpvos 4y ago
    Has WinMerge quadrupled its number of features in the last decade then? kdiff3 was such a relief, also for reliability and speed.
    - WalterGR 4y ago
      > Has WinMerge quadrupled its number of features in the last decade then? It has not. I have both installed. WinMerge is the superior program. It has 3-way merge, among many, many other features. Are you thinking of WinDiff? https://adamtheautomator.com/windiff/ https://adamtheautomator.com/windiff/ I'm talking about WinMerge: https://winmerge.org/?lang=en https://winmerge.org/?lang=en
      - gpvos 4y ago
        Looks like it was WinDiff indeed. Sorry. kdiff3 has the advantage that it also works on Linux etc. though.
        WalterGR 4y ago
        Goalposts. WinMerge works fine via Wine.

BugsJustFindMe 4y ago

Meld is great. It has my favorite clean UI of any 3-way diff/merge tool, but the horrendous performance on Mac because of GTK3 makes it hard to use sometimes.

berkut 4y ago
It has fairly bad performance in UI-terms in my experience on Linux as well with large files, I think because it's written in Python, so things like highlighting take ages...

ruined 4y ago

yes, it's in homebrew

sgarrity 4y ago

I assumed this was a "more native" port of Meld to macOS, as it has been available for Mac for a while. I've been using the version installed via `brew`. It appears this is the same version (the page says "Homebrew now installs Meld for OSX"). The macOS integration is a bit klunky (really feels like a non-native app), but this remains my preferred visual diff app. Thanks to those who make it and maintain the macOS port.

Klonoar 4y ago
At a glance I'd suspect it's a GTK app. Am I correct...? I recall that there's been a lot of work on GTK4/macOS. Maybe that'll come into play some day.
- techwizrd 4y ago
  Meld is a Gtk app. I like it enough that I choose to use it on Linux (for personal) and on macOS (for work).

m12k 4y ago

One of the things I like in P4Merge is having 4 panes - the two versions, their common ancestor, and the final merge result. Can you get all these in Meld as well?

ulrikrasmussen 4y ago
P4merge is my favorite merge tool for this reason. It's also really good at solving whitespace conflicts for you. I became familiar with it at a previous job that used perforce, and I have just kept using it with git. It's free to download, although you have to fill out an annoying form.
WalterGR 4y ago
I've always been puzzled by 4-way merge not being more common. Support is quite rare. KDiff3 is another tool that supports it.
- hprotagonist 4y ago
  KDiff3 is so consistently good and itself. I’ve been using it for ever; i don't expect to stop.
  - gpvos 4y ago
    Beyond Compare (not free) seems to have all kdiff3's features, plus some nice features for comparing tables (CSV or Excel) (although you need to tweak the defaults to make them actually useful). Also, it has syntax highlighting in its diff view, and I find its directory diff nicer than kdiff3's. I haven't used it for merging yet though; although it has three-way merge, I just am more familiar with kdiff3 and trust it since I've been using it for more than 20 years now.
- eastbound 4y ago
  I’ve always been puzzled by 3-way merge being remotely common. It’s almost “Here’s your latest file on two branches, good luck!” — There is obviously one leg missing but dare pointing it to a developer and he will tell you “But we have everything there” and when you draw a graph to explain the conceptual problem, “Ok but in general the two ancestors are common.” A fortnight later, they wreck a merge and they spend their afternoon re-merging conflicts they’ve already had. Such people almost always use the git tools provided in IntelliJ.

butterguns 4y ago

Would love to know how it compares to Beyond Compare, which is the tool I've been using for the last decade on the Mac

unmole 4y ago
Beyond Compare is significantly better.

jamesfmilne 4y ago

Beyond Compare is a pretty good diff/merge tool that runs natively on macOS. Sure it's UI is slightly non-native too. https://www.scootersoftware.com/ https://www.scootersoftware.com/

lkxijlewlf 4y ago
I love love Beyond Compare. It's been my go to diff tool for years.
zikohh 4y ago
Big fan of beyond compare
donatj 4y ago
I love and highly recommend Beyond Compare. That being said, the Mac version could use a little love of late. They're a small team so I mean… priorities I guess…
aninteger 4y ago
I suppose this is because it's written in FreePascal using Qt.
- badsectoracula 4y ago
  AFAIK it is written in Lazarus/LCL which in addition to the Qt backend it also has a native Cocoa backend. I wonder if the Qt backend is still better than the native Cocoa backend though - it used to be the case some years ago as it was easier to interface with Carbon than Cocoa (Free Pascal got an entire new language mode - Objective Pascal - to be able to use Objective C objects directly to work with Cocoa) so for years most effort went on the Carbon backend until it was deprecated and removed for 64bit apps - but nowadays all work is on the Cocoa backend. Perhaps in the future BC will switch to the Cocoa backend and provide more "native" controls (and wont need to bundle Qt either).
elromulous 4y ago
I love BC. The merge view was such a revelation. If you've never used it, do yourself a favor and try it out.

roydivision 4y ago

I used to use this until I discovered vim has a built in diffing mode - vimdiff. I’d still be using Meld if vim wasn’t already so much part of my workflow.

selykg 4y ago

I really like https://kaleidoscope.app https://kaleidoscope.app It has a new release and is the most Mac-like of the various diff tools I've used.

kstrauser 4y ago
It's such a pretty app, but I can't bring myself to drop $150 for it.
- corn13read 4y ago
- msbarnett 4y ago
  Eh, for how much use I get out of a merge tool, $150 is pretty meaningless for the right tool. We're talking fractions of fractions of fractions of a penny per use over many years. If it makes my life better those kinds of tooling costs aren't even worth thinking about. That said, I haven't used the new Kaleidoscope (although I was a fan of their last version and happily used it for 8 years or so), and currently use Sublime Merge. Edit: someone care to explain to me why this completely innocuous comment on my personal philosophy of tool value is worthy of downvoting to -2?
  - 40four 4y ago
    I’m sure someone as experienced as you knows commenting about up/ down votes is explicitly against the guidelines. No worries though. No need to fret, just imagine those sad souls, and what most be going through their heads, as to find your comment offensive :) Maybe they were pushing back against the idea of paying money, for good quality software, that provides value to your life?!? Haha, joking of course. But seriously, I agree with you. If it is a tool that I use all the time, makes my life easier, and is of good quality… I’m happy to pay up for a license. I’ve spent way more than that on my favorite database GUI clients over the years. Money well spent, and the developers earned it. Happy to support them!

cibyr 4y ago

> If you want to donate, please donate to the original Meld project. Anyone know how to actually do that? I've not been able to find a donation link on the Meld website.

Someone 4y ago
https://discourse.gnome.org/t/support-donate-to-meld/6909 https://discourse.gnome.org/t/support-donate-to-meld/6909: “We usually don’t receive donations for specific GNOME projects, but we collect donations for the whole organization. You can donate to GNOME at Donate – GNOME 6 Thanks for your interest in helping!“ (donation link is https://www.gnome.org/donate/ https://www.gnome.org/donate/)

SeanLuke 4y ago

Fun Fact. FileMerge.app has remained essentially unchanged since it was introduced in NeXTSTEP (I think 3.2 or earlier) in the early 1990s.

newaccount74 4y ago
FileMerge is a complete app. There's nothing more that it needs to do. It's trivial to understand, there is no learning curve, and it is my go-to tool when I need to quickly diff two files or folders.
- grishka 4y ago
  > FileMerge is a complete app. As are many other apps. Yet they keep getting redesigned and engulfed by endless feature creep because people gotta work on something.
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user3939382 4y ago
Copyright on it is 1996
- SeanLuke 4y ago
  FileMerge was released in NeXTSTEP 3.2, which came out in 1993. See for example: https://www.blackholeinc.com/Library/94%20Jan.html https://www.blackholeinc.com/Library/94%20Jan.html Indeed, I have it on my Turbo NeXTStation (3.2). Was it revised slightly for NeXTSTEP 4.0 (1996) perhaps?
js2 4y ago
It’s what I use for my diff tool with git. It’s available on the command line as opendiff.
ryankshaw 4y ago
yup. protip: Put this in your ~/.gitconfig [merge] tool = opendiff then next time you get a merge conflict, just do: `git mergetool` it will open xcode's FileMerge.app, which is the best mergetool I've ever used.

newaccount74 4y ago

If you are going through all the trouble to make a nice macOS build, why wouldn't you notarize it? I know that it's mostly security theather, but those scary warnings that Apple shows for software they haven't notarized must scare a lot of people away.

Dangeranger 4y ago
You need to sign the Apple Developer terms of service and pay $100 annually I believe. People who ascribe to the FLOSS ethos are often opposed to the terms and conditions Apple dictates.

kodisha 4y ago

I REALLY love the way merge tool works in IntelliJ IDEA. Is there some other tool out there that works in a similar way, and that good? (tho, typing idea . and doing a merge fix is not that bad)

sanirank 4y ago
I wish IntelliJ would sell git-only tool - their three way merge tool is the best I’ve used, and would gladly pay for a license.
- kodisha 4y ago
  Actually, I think I answered my own question. That tool is so good because it leverages the entire eco-system of IDE it is running in. The resulting merge panel is as powerful as any editor window in the IDE. It has code inspections, it detects missing imports, it does everything. It might be the case that ripping the diff/merge tool out of the IDE would result in way inferior product than we get when we use it within the IDE.
  - sk0g 4y ago
    The only issue I have with it is that it doesn't provide breadcrumbs when diffing. If you've set it to collapse unchanged fragments, it can be hard to tell when a line is in another function, conditional block, etc. Otherwise, yeah it's amazing!
alostpuppy 4y ago
Agreed. The magic button the top have saved me dev years of time.
- xwowsersx 4y ago
  Which magic button?
xwowsersx 4y ago
It's great. When I'm in a file in PyCharm or IntelliJ, I use ⌥⌘x (custom keymapping for select branch to compare) to select a branch to compare to and the diff is great.

destitude 4y ago

Makes me concerned when they still use the phrase "Mac/OSX" instead of the correct nomenclature "macOS".

kelahcim 4y ago

Sublime Merge (when it comes to git integration) is the best choice now - at least for me. Meld, on the other hand, is the best tool for comparing local copies and directories.

ibioes 4y ago

there is also diffuse merge tool, it's pretty good, it works on mac as well (I personally use it on fedora through flatpak)

jacobsenscott 4y ago

Shout out to Emacs Ediff - it can compare files, directories, buffers (open files), regions within buffers (selected text within files, and is version control aware.

Dangeranger 4y ago
Once I learned to use Ediff with Magit there was no going back. It has been consistently the quickest and easiest thing for solving complicated merges of many files in a rebase.
onetom 4y ago
Any experience with vdiff? https://github.com/justbur/emacs-vdiff https://github.com/justbur/emacs-vdiff How does it fare compared to ediff?
- jacobsenscott 4y ago
  Never used it. I suppose if you are fond of vimdiff, but migrating to emacs it might be nice.

dummy_physicist 4y ago

I use neovim as mergetool and some ad hoc diff tasks, but I'm glad to see meld on Mac. It is the tool I recommend when I see someone struggling with git rebase conflicts (and not using using vim).

difflens 4y ago

Just plugging difflens here: https://github.com/marketplace/difflens https://github.com/marketplace/difflens If you work primarily with frontend technologies and want a syntax aware diff on GitHub PRs, difflens might be right up your alley! Standalone Mac and Windows apps are coming out soon.

wnolens 4y ago

Strange, I haven't used a merge tool in 2-3 years. old job: Changes staged locally for 2-3 weeks sometimes. Team-specific branches, integrating into the mainline periodically.. eventually moved to several hundred devs committing to mainline. One monster repo Beyond Compare 2 was the only tool for the job simply for the ability to provide a manual hint (via spacebar) to align two version of the same file current company: never merge more than a line or two which I do with vim. Change sets only last max 1 week on my machine. We have 5-6 services (each in their own repo). 20 people committing amongst them all. I do wish our code review tool was better though. Perhaps I will take one of the suggestions from this thread and build a custom CR work flow.

beepbooptheory 4y ago

Feel so bad for Mac people, things we take for granted in GNU world need to undergo so much ceremony and packaging to get into the ecosystem there.

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ahwvd37js 4y ago

Kaleidoscope is def (pun intended) the prettiest diff'ing tool, but it is very sluggish on 1000+ line files. In those cases I use CompareMerge.

piskov 4y ago

Strange that no one mentioned Araxis merge https://www.araxis.com/merge/index.en https://www.araxis.com/merge/index.en

lowbloodsugar 4y ago
Life saver.
1over137 4y ago
I use it on macOS. It's quite good!
benjimouse 4y ago
The problem with Araxis Merge is you have to pay for upgrades. Sure you don't "have to", but eventually it stops working for some reason and/or you get new machine, cant find the license key, and it's awkward so you end up having to buy a new one. I've used it for more than 15 years, and bought it 3-4 times. I honestly don't believe it's worth that, and I'm not going to buy it again. I would be willing to pay what they ask for a years license, to actually own it in perpetuity, only receiving updates when OS changes stop it functioning. As they won't offer that, I no longer use it.

chris_wot 4y ago

Oh, this is the greatest! The brew version of meld is quite out of date (still very functional). Don't know how I'd live without it...

ppljudge 4y ago

This is my favorite merge tool for years. Haven’t seen updates for the latest mac OS Mojave though

WalterGR 4y ago
? The most recent version works on Mojave and is available via Homebrew.

onetom 4y ago

How do you evaluate diff tools, like this? Is there some common repository of merge conflicts, which one can use to gauge how well a certain tool fares?

dev_tty01 4y ago
If this doesn't exist, it should. Good idea.

gtest 4y ago

Honest question: I have been using emacs/vim for many years, and always just used the diff viewer shipped with them. Any reason to switch to these tools? Do they have some functionality not available in these old tools? I am, frankly, ignorant of what these tools provide.

anitil 4y ago
I really like vimdiff, but I belive it doesn't do folder diffs (whereas beyond compare does this well)
- pfranz 4y ago
  Maybe my use-cases are too basic? I appreciate a good diff gui, but really like vimdiff more than almost all of the ones I've seen. For folders `diff -qr one/ two/` does everything I feel like I need. I love just filtering things with grep instead of trying to figure out however that tool wants to ignore specific changes.

ossusermivami 4y ago

I get confused by diff GUIs but I have been using "git-delta" https://github.com/dandavison/delta https://github.com/dandavison/delta as a pager of git and it's been wonderful so far (just for the syntax highlighting in diff) diffstatic is nice too and use it sparingly

mlatu 4y ago

i like meld. but i dont like how it takes ages to start on windows

harel 4y ago

Meld is one of the first things I make sure I have on a new Linux install. Usually good apps come out for Mac only and the likes of me go all "wot, no Linux version?" but today I learned that until today, Mac users might have said that on Meld.

RMPR 4y ago
> but today I learned that until today, Mac users might have said that on Meld. The same thing for KDE connect two days ago. I am not sure I totally agree with the feeling though, in fact, it's the opposite. Many apps I use on a daily basis are not available for Mac.
- harel 4y ago
  I very recently learned that KDE Connect has a Gnome version. My comment was mostly said jokingly. I have been using Linux exclusively for the past 18 years or so. My only experience is seeing posts about Mac apps I think are cool, only to find later they only exist in the OSX world.

AltruisticGapHN 4y ago

Thank you for Meld for OSX, love it. Always used meld on Ubuntu as well. I love how simple and clear it is. Small UX/QOL improvement on OSX could be to remember the window's position and size between launches.

tmslnz 4y ago

I was moved by the message on the last GH release for Meld macOS. So tragic and sad, and I will pray for your brother Youssef. Dedicated to Osama If you use this software, please pray for my brother. https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/christchurch-shooting/111375038/osama-abu-kwaik-was-a-refugee-born-to-an-orphan-who-died-in-christchurch-the-city-he-loved https://github.com/yousseb/meld/releases/tag/osx-19 https://github.com/yousseb/meld/releases/tag/osx-19

manx 4y ago

I found it a bit frustrating that merge tools I used were never able to solve trivial merge conflicts automatically. So I built something myself: https://fdietze.github.io/blend https://fdietze.github.io/blend On that page you can paste your merge conflict and copy the automatically merged result, along with some useful diffs. I hope it helps someone else. So far it solves around 80% of my conflicts automatically.

niedzielski 4y ago
This is what I use in my ~/.gitconfig: [difftool "meld"] cmd = meld "$LOCAL" "$REMOTE" [mergetool "meld"] cmd = meld --auto-merge --output "$MERGED" "$LOCAL" "$BASE" "$REMOTE"
- manx 4y ago
  As far as I understand, this only resolves conflicts, git can already resolve with it's line-based approach. I'm talking about conflicts within a single line, that a line based approach cannot solve.
  - niedzielski 4y ago
    Thanks! I wasn't understanding that before.