Re: Use of kdiff3

On Monday 08 Nov 2010, Giulio Troccoli wrote:
> Lots of people here use either TortoiseMerge or WinMerge for conflict
> resolution. But now I have a requirement to provide something similar for a
> Linux platform and I thought of kdiff3.
>
> I there anyone else that uses as well? I have install it but I would like
> some advice on how to call it. I know it can take two or three files, but
> I'm not sure why (i.e. what's the difference) and which files to "feed" it
> with and in what order.
>
> Thanks
> Giulio
>

I've used it from the command line but found I had to fiddle with the file
options a bit to get them in the right order for a 3 way diff. I recall
having to explicitly set the merge output file but that may be because I
messed with the order of files.

I also use kdiff3 from Kate as an external tool and bound to shift+F12 so I
can diff the current file in a quick and easy way. The following is the
script.

cd %directory
if [ -e .svn/text-base/%filename.svn-base ]; then
  tmpfile=/tmp/svndiff-$$.tmp
  svn cat %filename > $tmpfile
  kdiff3 --L1 '%filename base' $tmpfile %filename
  rm $tmpfile
else
  kdialog --title Error --msgbox "The file '%filename' is not in Subversion."
fi

Not sure if you still need this but for completeness and the list archives.
Two files is usually used to compare current changes against the base
revision, ie. what have I changed. A three file comparison is for conflict
resolution where another developer has committed a newer version of the file
than you are working from and will allow you to easily merge the changes in
as you can your changes and the other developers changes at the same time.
It's better to think of it like this, the left file is the original version
of the file before any changes are made. The right file is the updated file
in version control and the middle file has your changes but needs to include
those from the right.

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