On Feb 17, 2007, at 6:32 PM, John Daniel wrote: I second that FileMerge lacks finess. Providing a second comparison (which I used to love back in the Windows era):
Beyond Compare
The usability and visual finess of it is something we all expect of Apple. Only, this time, Apple is the laggard one with FileMerge. Please catch up. :)
I agree. I think FileMerge, as it is, is one of the best file comparison tools available. Still, it needs just a little bit extra to be absolutely the best. All it needs is to be able to know the location of the original file so I can easily save a merged file without having to re-navigate. That is a real pain. Also, it would really be great to be able to see and edit the merged file before saving.
Oddly enough, most of the power of FileMerge is available when invoked from the command line. For example, if svn has noted a conflict in your files:
opendiff file.r5 file.r6 -ancestor file.r3 -merge file
opens FileMerge with the diffs noted between r5 and r6, with a common ancestor r4 (so it can tell which changes to take from which version), and the merge result when saved will be put into the main file. Then you can svn resolved file and be done.
It is a shame that most of FileMerge's capabilities are hidden and undocumented. We've been spending our effort in building a better merge/diff into Xcode, and you will see the initial results of that in Xcode 3.0.
Chris |