Using meld on Mac

using_meld_on_mac.md

Using Meld merging tool on Mac

There are two ways of installing meld on osx (May 2023), using brew and .dmg package (from @yousseb). Since I found https://yousseb.github.io/meld/, I've installed it with .dmg package, but having macOS Ventura Version 13.4 (22F66) in place, it's not even starting for me. So I tried brew installation, and the application is working as expected, including symlink to start it from the terminal.

Using brew formulae: https://formulae.brew.sh/cask/meld

brew install --cask meld

# set meld as your default git mergetool
git config --global merge.tool meld

Requires: macOS >= 10.13 meld has been officially discontinued upstream. It may stop working correctly (or at all) in recent versions of macOS.

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Previous docs

• Alternative method (by @yousseb), try .dmg package yourself: https://yousseb.github.io/meld (caveat: project haven't been updated since Jul 2022).

• Legacy methods (including old osx versions): https://gist.github.com/p1nox/6102015/4fa2a9ba9379879a35e113921770c85e09861e8a

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Troubleshooting:

• If meld doesn't start from terminal, try this, modify the /usr/local/Caskroom/meld/3.19.2-r6,osx-15/meld.wrapper.sh script installed by brew to the following:

#!/bin/sh
rm -rf ~/Library/Saved\ Application\ State/org.gnome.meld.savedState
exec '/Applications/Meld.app/Contents/MacOS/Meld' "$@"

I guess it's brew install caskroom/cask/meld now.

In case you are on High Sierra and having

frozen: ImportError
Cannot import: GTK+
dlopen(/Applications/Meld.app/Contents/Resources/lib/python2.7/gi/_gi.so, 2): Symbol not found: _inflateValidate
  Referenced from: /System/Library/Frameworks/ImageIO.framework/Versions/A/Resources/libPng.dylib
  Expected in: /Applications/Meld.app/Contents/Frameworks/libz.1.dylib
 in /System/Library/Frameworks/ImageIO.framework/Versions/A/Resources/libPng.dylib

See: yousseb/meld#51

I have just managed to install and lauch meld with the following steps:
$ brew tap homebrew/cask
$ brew cask install meld

Thank you @p1nox for the gist!

In case you are on High Sierra and having

frozen: ImportError
Cannot import: GTK+
dlopen(/Applications/Meld.app/Contents/Resources/lib/python2.7/gi/_gi.so, 2): Symbol not found: _inflateValidate
  Referenced from: /System/Library/Frameworks/ImageIO.framework/Versions/A/Resources/libPng.dylib
  Expected in: /Applications/Meld.app/Contents/Frameworks/libz.1.dylib
 in /System/Library/Frameworks/ImageIO.framework/Versions/A/Resources/libPng.dylib

See: yousseb/meld#51

Worked!