Re: feature request

[Kai Willadsen <kai willadsen gmail com>]

On 16 August 2013 03:42, david kerns <david t kerns gmail com> wrote:
> Hi new to the mail list so sorry if this is a duplicate request... (I did a
> quick search through the archive but certainly not exhaustive)
>
> many times I do directory compares...
>
> meld dir1 dir2
>
> some times I have this:
>
> dir1/sub/x.cc
> dir1/sub/x.cc.orig
> ...
>
> dir2/sub/x.cc
> ...
>
> it would be really slick to be able to select the specific files to "diff"
> (in a tab of the current directory diff)
> ie either:
>    dir1/sub/x.cc vs dir1/sub/x.cc.orig
> or
>   dir1/sub/x.cc.orig vs dir2/sub/x.cc
>
> and not just the matching relative path file names
>
> the UI to select the files to diff is what will make/break this feature
> (without cluttering up the default behavior)
>
> anyway, thanks for continued work on this wonderful tool!

Thanks for the feedback!

This is actually a really old request
(https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=416387) that is sadly
difficult to figure out. Actually implementing it would be fairly
trivial. Keeping anything else remotely sane while doing so seems
impossible.

The problem is that selection handling across multiple trees is
complicated. At the moment, we Do The Right Thing by just enforcing
that there is only one active selection between all the current trees.
If we allowed each tree to have its own active selection, then every
compare operation becomes ambiguous. How do we know whether you
*meant* to compare X in tree one with Y in tree two, or whether you
just left the cursor there? etc.  It's also quite visually distracting
having multiple selections, but that's a different story.

So I'm afraid that I don't know of any better way to do this than what
we currently enable: open up the files and then use the file browser
to select the file you really wanted to diff.

...but I'm interested in any possible solutions to the problem.

cheers,
Kai


On 16 August 2013 03:42, david kerns <david t kerns gmail com> wrote:
> Hi new to the mail list so sorry if this is a duplicate request... (I did a
> quick search through the archive but certainly not exhaustive)
>
> many times I do directory compares...
>
> meld dir1 dir2
>
> some times I have this:
>
> dir1/sub/x.cc
> dir1/sub/x.cc.orig
> ...
>
> dir2/sub/x.cc
> ...
>
> it would be really slick to be able to select the specific files to "diff"
> (in a tab of the current directory diff)
> ie either:
>    dir1/sub/x.cc vs dir1/sub/x.cc.orig
> or
>   dir1/sub/x.cc.orig vs dir2/sub/x.cc
>
> and not just the matching relative path file names
>
> the UI to select the files to diff is what will make/break this feature
> (without cluttering up the default behavior)
>
> anyway, thanks for continued work on this wonderful tool!
>
> dave
>
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