I can get winmerge to show me diffs for modified file. But for new files, winmerge gives a dialog saying 'Left path is invalid!'. I want it to show the left pane as empty and right pane with the contents of the file.
$ git difftool head^ newfile.txt
winmerge Dialog:
I'm on git version 2.8.2.windows.1
This is my git config for difftool:
[diff]
tool = winmerge
[difftool]
prompt = false
[difftool "winmerge"]
cmd = \"C:\\Program Files (x86)\\WinMerge\\WinMergeU.exe\" -e -ub -wl \"$LOCAL\" \"$REMOTE\"
What am I missing?
I could not find this exact workaround so I'm posting this. Hopefully, someone finds it useful.
I use a winmerge.sh
script which simply passes an already created empty file for newly added (or removed) file. The script is in a dir that's on my PATH
or /git/cmd/
dir for git bash.
winmerge.sh (similar to one here)
#!/bin/sh
# $1 is $LOCAL
# $2 is $REMOTE
NULL="/dev/null"
empty="$HOME/winmerge.empty"
if [ "$2" = "$NULL" ] ; then
# added
"D:/setups/WinMerge/WinMergeU.exe" -e -ub -wl -wr "$1" "$empty"
elif [ "$1" = "$NULL" ] ; then
# removed
"D:/setups/WinMerge/WinMergeU.exe" -e -ub -wl "$empty" "$2"
else
# modified
"D:/setups/WinMerge/WinMergeU.exe" -e -ub -wl "$1" "$2"
fi
I keep an empty file winmerge.empty
at this path $HOME
(which is c:/users/<username>
).
I use the sh
script in .gitconfig
.
.gitconfig
[diff]
tool = winmerge
[difftool]
prompt = false
[difftool "winmerge"]
cmd = winmerge.sh "$LOCAL" "$REMOTE"
Note:
To diff untracked files (new files) also before committing, I do
$ git add -N --no-all .
then use difftool
. -N --no-all
only adds the path of new files to index but not their content (--no-all
is required to NOT stage the deleted files).