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HOWTO: Using FileMerge (opendiff) with Git on OSX

HOWTO: Using FileMerge (opendiff) with Git on OSX

FileMerge (opendiff) can really come in handy when you need to visually compare merging conflicts. Other times it's just a nice visual way to review your days work.

The following method works by creating a simple bash script (git-diff-cmd.sh) that sets us up with the proper command line arguments for Git to pass off files to FileMerge.

  1. Open the bash script for editing:

     vi ~/bin/git-diff-cmd.sh
    
  2. Paste the following code:

     #!/bin/sh 
     /usr/bin/opendiff "$2" "$5" -merge "$1"
    
  3. Make the bash script executable:

     chmod +x ~/bin/git-diff-cmd.sh
    
  4. Tell Git (globally) to run our bash script when 'git diff' is issued:

     git config --global diff.external ~/bin/git-diff-cmd.sh
    

Now head over to your Git-aware project directory and issue a git diff /path/to/modified/file.py and FileMerge will pop up showing you the differences against it and HEAD.

You can also do things like git diff --cached to review all the changes against HEAD.

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