This is a subjective evaluation of Meld. Please add your opinion.
Description
Meld is a tool for making manual merges. It is a 3-way editor with visualization and propagation of differences.
Meld is packaged for just about every Linux and Unix distribution, including Fedora, Ubuntu, and Suse. Meld does work on OS X and Windows, but there are no all-in-one packages for those systems available at the moment. On OS X, Meld is available from MacPorts, Fink, and Homebrew. There are some notes available on how to get Meld running on Windows.
Usage notes and tips
- "Arrows" for propagation mode are toggled somehow with shift and control and alt
- All 3 panes can be edited individually and must be saved individually
- One way of working with Meld is to work towards making all 3 files equal - that forces you to review and rethink your merges in both contexts
- Mercurial by default puts "file" is to the left, then "file~base", and finally "file~other"
- By default then the left pane is the merge result
- Enjoy that it is easy to see how the base version has diverged into two different versions
- Changes from the new parent in "file~other" (to the right) can be propagated to "file" (to the left) through "file~base"
- You could (and should?) start by copying everything from "file~other" to "file~base" in order to work with the two parents side-by-side - but then it is just a two-way merge...
- Or, to change the order and which panes are displayed add a section "[merge-tools]" with "meld.args = $base $local $other" to your ~/.hgrc, specifying the order you prefer (since Meld's default order is different from some other diff tools)
- To not see base at all set it to "meld.args = $local $other". You merge to the local copy, which in this arrangement is still the left pane
Issues
- No help for merging
Conclusion
A good visualization tool and editor. A strong tool if you know what you are doing. But is lacking automatic merge features.