from Hacker News

Meld for Macs

by niedzielski on 5/16/22, 7:25 PM with 149 comments

• by selykg on 5/16/22, 8:27 PM

  I really like https://kaleidoscope.app

  It has a new release and is the most Mac-like of the various diff tools I've used.

• by jamesfmilne on 5/16/22, 8:00 PM

  Beyond Compare is a pretty good diff/merge tool that runs natively on macOS. Sure it's UI is slightly non-native too.

  https://www.scootersoftware.com/

• by m12k on 5/16/22, 7:58 PM

  One of the things I like in P4Merge is having 4 panes - the two versions, their common ancestor, and the final merge result. Can you get all these in Meld as well?

• by tmslnz on 5/17/22, 9:41 AM

  I was moved by the message on the last GH release for Meld macOS. So tragic and sad, and I will pray for your brother Youssef.

    Dedicated to Osama
    If you use this software, please pray for my brother.
    https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/christchurch-shooting/111375038/osama-abu-kwaik-was-a-refugee-born-to-an-orphan-who-died-in-christchurch-the-city-he-loved
  

  https://github.com/yousseb/meld/releases/tag/osx-19

• by sgarrity on 5/16/22, 7:55 PM

  I assumed this was a "more native" port of Meld to macOS, as it has been available for Mac for a while. I've been using the version installed via `brew`.

  It appears this is the same version (the page says "Homebrew now installs Meld for OSX").

  The macOS integration is a bit klunky (really feels like a non-native app), but this remains my preferred visual diff app. Thanks to those who make it and maintain the macOS port.

• by roydivision on 5/16/22, 8:07 PM

  I used to use this until I discovered vim has a built in diffing mode - vimdiff. I’d still be using Meld if vim wasn’t already so much part of my workflow.

• by ossusermivami on 5/17/22, 5:29 AM

  I get confused by diff GUIs but I have been using "git-delta" https://github.com/dandavison/delta as a pager of git and it's been wonderful so far (just for the syntax highlighting in diff)

  diffstatic is nice too and use it sparingly

• by jacobsenscott on 5/16/22, 10:20 PM

  Shout out to Emacs Ediff - it can compare files, directories, buffers (open files), regions within buffers (selected text within files, and is version control aware.

• by kelahcim on 5/16/22, 10:00 PM

  Sublime Merge (when it comes to git integration) is the best choice now - at least for me.

  Meld, on the other hand, is the best tool for comparing local copies and directories.

• by kodisha on 5/16/22, 9:47 PM

  I REALLY love the way merge tool works in IntelliJ IDEA.

  Is there some other tool out there that works in a similar way, and that good?

  (tho, typing idea . and doing a merge fix is not that bad)

• by piskov on 5/17/22, 1:50 AM

  Strange that no one mentioned Araxis merge

  https://www.araxis.com/merge/index.en

• by difflens on 5/16/22, 10:39 PM

  Just plugging difflens here: https://github.com/marketplace/difflens

  If you work primarily with frontend technologies and want a syntax aware diff on GitHub PRs, difflens might be right up your alley! Standalone Mac and Windows apps are coming out soon.

• by gtest on 5/17/22, 3:44 AM

  Honest question: I have been using emacs/vim for many years, and always just used the diff viewer shipped with them. Any reason to switch to these tools? Do they have some functionality not available in these old tools? I am, frankly, ignorant of what these tools provide.

• by wnolens on 5/16/22, 11:06 PM

  Strange, I haven't used a merge tool in 2-3 years.

  old job: Changes staged locally for 2-3 weeks sometimes. Team-specific branches, integrating into the mainline periodically.. eventually moved to several hundred devs committing to mainline. One monster repo

  Beyond Compare 2 was the only tool for the job simply for the ability to provide a manual hint (via spacebar) to align two version of the same file

  current company: never merge more than a line or two which I do with vim. Change sets only last max 1 week on my machine. We have 5-6 services (each in their own repo). 20 people committing amongst them all.

  I do wish our code review tool was better though. Perhaps I will take one of the suggestions from this thread and build a custom CR work flow.

• by manx on 5/20/22, 1:23 AM

  I found it a bit frustrating that merge tools I used were never able to solve trivial merge conflicts automatically. So I built something myself: https://fdietze.github.io/blend

  On that page you can paste your merge conflict and copy the automatically merged result, along with some useful diffs. I hope it helps someone else. So far it solves around 80% of my conflicts automatically.

• by SeanLuke on 5/16/22, 8:29 PM

  Fun Fact. FileMerge.app has remained essentially unchanged since it was introduced in NeXTSTEP (I think 3.2 or earlier) in the early 1990s.

• by BugsJustFindMe on 5/16/22, 7:52 PM

  Meld is great. It has my favorite clean UI of any 3-way diff/merge tool, but the horrendous performance on Mac because of GTK3 makes it hard to use sometimes.

• by WalterGR on 5/16/22, 7:40 PM

  How does it compare to WinMerge? I haven't found a tool on any platform that beats it.

  In fact, I use Wine on my Mac specifically so I can use WinMerge.

• by harel on 5/17/22, 9:32 AM

  Meld is one of the first things I make sure I have on a new Linux install. Usually good apps come out for Mac only and the likes of me go all "wot, no Linux version?" but today I learned that until today, Mac users might have said that on Meld.

• by newaccount74 on 5/16/22, 8:29 PM

  If you are going through all the trouble to make a nice macOS build, why wouldn't you notarize it?

  I know that it's mostly security theather, but those scary warnings that Apple shows for software they haven't notarized must scare a lot of people away.

• by onetom on 5/17/22, 3:19 AM

  How do you evaluate diff tools, like this?

  Is there some common repository of merge conflicts, which one can use to gauge how well a certain tool fares?

• by butterguns on 5/16/22, 7:59 PM

  Would love to know how it compares to Beyond Compare, which is the tool I've been using for the last decade on the Mac

• by dummy_physicist on 5/16/22, 10:26 PM

  I use neovim as mergetool and some ad hoc diff tasks, but I'm glad to see meld on Mac. It is the tool I recommend when I see someone struggling with git rebase conflicts (and not using using vim).

• by AltruisticGapHN on 5/17/22, 9:37 AM

  Thank you for Meld for OSX, love it.

  Always used meld on Ubuntu as well. I love how simple and clear it is.

  Small UX/QOL improvement on OSX could be to remember the window's position and size between launches.

• by cibyr on 5/16/22, 8:27 PM

  > If you want to donate, please donate to the original Meld project.

  Anyone know how to actually do that? I've not been able to find a donation link on the Meld website.

• by ahwvd37js on 5/17/22, 12:07 AM

  Kaleidoscope is def (pun intended) the prettiest diff'ing tool, but it is very sluggish on 1000+ line files. In those cases I use CompareMerge.

• by chris_wot on 5/17/22, 2:05 AM

  Oh, this is the greatest! The brew version of meld is quite out of date (still very functional). Don't know how I'd live without it...

• by destitude on 5/16/22, 9:54 PM

  Makes me concerned when they still use the phrase "Mac/OSX" instead of the correct nomenclature "macOS".

• by ppljudge on 5/17/22, 2:08 AM

  This is my favorite merge tool for years. Haven’t seen updates for the latest mac OS Mojave though

• by ruined on 5/16/22, 7:52 PM

  yes, it's in homebrew

• by smoldesu on 5/16/22, 7:32 PM

  Meld is excellent, cool to see a port for Mac too!

• by ibioes on 5/16/22, 10:18 PM

  there is also diffuse merge tool, it's pretty good, it works on mac as well (I personally use it on fedora through flatpak)

• by mlatu on 5/17/22, 6:44 AM

  i like meld. but i dont like how it takes ages to start on windows

• by beepbooptheory on 5/16/22, 11:15 PM

  Feel so bad for Mac people, things we take for granted in GNU world need to undergo so much ceremony and packaging to get into the ecosystem there.