tdiff3

A text-based 3-way diff/merge tool that can handle large files

This program is based on the merge algorithm of kdiff3, but was written from scratch in D (http://dlang.org) and released under the GPL.

The differences with kdiff3 (and possibly other diff/merge programs) are:

• it runs in a terminal (no dependency on X or Qt)
• it was designed to handle very large files efficiently, both in terms of speed as well as in the amount of memory it uses

Project status

Tdiff3 is still at an early stage of development. This means that some important features are still missing. Some examples:

• it isn't clear in the user interface what keys can be used
• there is no status bar or other type of feedback when the application cannot execute a command from the user (such as saving the file when there are still unsolved conflicts)

This will be the focus of development in the coming period.

If you're interested in this program, either as a user or possibly even a developer I'd love to hear from you. You can find my email address on GitHub.

Screenshots

Requires

• ncurses >= 5.9
• libtermkey >= 0.17

Compiling from source

1. Install libtermkey (preferably using your distribution's package manager, but alternatively following the steps below)
2. Install the DMD compiler
3. Install DUB - The D package repository
4. Get, build and run tdiff3

This can be as simple as:

1.
    (Skip this step if you have installed libtermkey using your package manager)
    cd ~/somedir
    wget http://www.leonerd.org.uk/code/libtermkey/libtermkey-0.17.tar.gz
    tar zxf libtermkey-0.17.tar.gz
    (cd libtermkey-0.17; make install PREFIX=${HOME}/somedir/local-libtermkey)
    export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}:${HOME}/somedir/local-libtermkey/lib
    export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=${PKG_CONFIG_PATH}:${HOME}/somedir/local-libtermkey/lib/pkgconfig
    
2.  
    cd ~/somedir
    wget http://downloads.dlang.org/releases/2.x/2.068.0/dmd.2.068.0.linux.zip
    unzip dmd.2.068.0.linux.zip
    export PATH=${PATH}:${HOME}/somedir/dmd2/linux/bin64
    
3.  git clone --branch v0.9.24-rc.3 https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dub.git
    (cd dub; ./build.sh)  # don't leave out the parentheses
    export PATH=${PATH}:${HOME}/somedir/dub/bin
    
4.  git clone https://github.com/Griffon26/tdiff3.git
    cd tdiff3 && dub
    ./tdiff3

Tips

• run tdiff3 in an xterm (for now colors may be missing or keys not working in other terminals)
• set TERM=xterm-256color (TERM=xterm only supports 16 colors, not enough to show the selection background color)
• navigate between differences with alt-arrows/pageup/pagedown
• perform conflict resolution with alt-1/2/3
• save the merge result with F2 (only if all conflicts have been resolved)