WinMerge as git difftool on Windows
In case you're looking for a way to use WinMerge as your git difftool on Windows, this tip may be helpful.
In fact, it's simple to resolve and is also a silly problem but it took me a good amount of time just because of the path where WinMerge was installed at C:\Program Files (x86)\winmerge\winmergeu.exe
Not surprisingly, I faced problems with characters like the parenthesis(. And that's ok. We know we can put it between double quotes " ". But it took me a while to get it right as I wanted.
Browsing over the web you will find many ways of doing this. The way that worked pretty well for me is this one:
1) Open .gitconfig file. It's located at your home directory: c:\users\username\.gitconfig
2) Add the lines below. Pay attention to the single quotes wrapping the path to winmerge:
[diff]
tool = winmerge
[difftool "winmerge"]
cmd = "'C:/Program Files (x86)/WinMerge/WinMergeU.exe'" -e "$LOCAL" "$REMOTE"You can pass other parameters to WinMerge if you want. Follow the whole discussion here:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2468230/how-to-use-winmerge-with-git-extensions
[Edited] For those wondering how to use the command, here is an example:<br />
git difftool HEAD HEAD~1
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Written by Henrique Oliveira
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4 Responses
Hello, what do you have in $LOCAL and $REMOTE ?
That is exactly the line I have in my .gitconfig. They are placeholders for WinMerge parameters. Then you may call like that:
git difftool README.md
It'll open README.md on WinMerge comparing your local version with the baseline.
Thanks for sharing!
[difftool "WinMerge"]
cmd = \"C:\\Program Files\\WinMerge\\WinMergeU.exe\" -e -u -dl \"Old $BASE\" -dr \"New $BASE\" \"$LOCAL\" \"$REMOTE\"
trustExitCode = true
[mergetool "WinMerge"]
cmd = \"C:\\Program Files\\WinMerge\\WinMergeU.exe\" -e -u -dl \"Local\" -dm \"Base\" -dr \"Remote\" \"$LOCAL\" \"$BASE\" \"$REMOTE\" -o \"$MERGED\"
trustExitCode = true
keepBackup = false
