Git Diff and Meld on Windows

Question

Has anyone ever made Meld work with Git on Windows? I am trying to make it work and I have no success.

I have Meld installed and when I call it from the command line with two files as parameters it diffs them well so Meld is installed correctly. However I can't make it work with Git (Git Diff). I use version git version 1.8.1.msysgit.1 of Git.

I have tried several things: I created a shell script, meld.sh:

#!/bin/bash
meld.exe "$2" "$5"
echo $2
echo $5

and used it from Git:

[diff]
    tool = meld

[difftool "meld"]
    cmd = \"D:\\meld.sh\"

I tried to add it as a difftool like this:

[diff]
    tool = meld

[difftool "meld"]
    cmd = \"C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Meld\\meld\\meld.exe\" 

or like this:

[diff]
    tool = meld

[difftool "meld"]
    cmd = '\"/c/Program Files (x86)/Meld/meld/meld.exe\" $PWD/$LOCAL $PWD/$BASE $PWD/$REMOTE --output=$PWD/$MERGED'

But it really does not seem to work. I also tried to echo the second($2) and fifth($5) parameter from my shell script and no output. I also tried using a batch script in several ways:

meld.exe %2 %5

or

meld.exe %~2 %~5

But it really does not work... How can I pass the two versions of the file Git uses when diffing to Meld? It's pretty annoying...

Answer 1

Usually, you can find an example on Windows similar to this gist, with meld.exe being in your PATH):

git config --global merge.tool meld
git config --global mergetool.meld.cmd 'meld.exe \"$BASE\" \"$LOCAL\" \"$REMOTE\" \"$MERGED\"'

git config --global diff.tool meld
git config --global difftool.meld.cmd 'meld.exe \"$LOCAL\" \"$REMOTE\"'

You can find more robust settings in "Git mergetool with Meld on Windows", but the idea remains the same.

---

The OP reports in the comments:

For the difftool, your commands write the following configurations in .gitconfig:

[diff]
  tool = meld
[difftool "meld"]
  cmd = meld.exe \\\"$LOCAL\\\" \\\"$REMOTE\\\"

I changed them to:

[diff]
  tool = meld
[difftool "meld"]
  cmd = meld.exe $LOCAL $REMOTE

and everything worked fine.

Answer 2

Or even better, if you're on a locked-down system where fooling with the path is not allowed or you just don't want to pollute your path space, you can just put in the full path to Meld.

I also prefer my current working code copy to show up on the left, so I swapped the $REMOTE and $LOCAL arguments. Also mind the conversions of \ to / and don't for get to escape the double quotes.

[diff]
    tool = meld
[difftool "meld"]
    cmd = \"C:/Program Files (x86)/Meld/meld/meld.exe\" $REMOTE $LOCAL

Answer 3

For Windows 7 (or even other versions of windows), add these lines in the .gitconfig file.

[diff]

    tool = meld

[merge]

    tool = meld

[difftool "meld"]

    path = C:/Program Files (x86)/Meld/meld/meld.exe

[mergetool "meld"]

    path = C:/Program Files (x86)/Meld/meld/meld.exe

Note that there is no need to use " for the path even if it includes spaces. Just remember to use forward slashes instead of backward slashes.

Answer 4

I tried several variations of trying to set the path with git config to no avail. Since I want to use Meld from the Git Bash console window, what did work was to export the path to the Meld directory, restart the Bash shell and lo & behold git difftool --tool-help and git mergetool --tool-help now recognize Meld, and I can choose it as my preferred tool.

.profile

export PATH=/c/Program\ Files\ \(x86\)/Meld/:$PATH

.gitconfig

[merge]
    tool = meld
[diff]
    tool = meld

Answer 5

Another tip for users invoking diff from gitk (by right-clicking the context menu item "External Diff"):

The above settings may get overridden by gitk's preferences. In that case, change the tools in gitk's menu Edit → Preferences → General → External diff setting.