Re: Passing a single directory or file to meld

[Kai Willadsen <kai willadsen gmail com>]

On 19 March 2013 23:31, Angel Ezquerra <angel ezquerra gmail com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> currently if you pass a single directory to meld it tries to open it
> in "version control mode". Personally I can see the value of that mode
> but I do not use it myself. Instead what I often want to do (on
> Windows) is to use the meld shortcut that Kai's installer creates on
> the "Send to" context menu to start a diff between two directories or
> files.
>
> For example, if you want to compare two folders that happen to be on
> the same location (i.e. on the same directory) you can just select the
> two folders on Windows Explorer, right click, select "Send To / Meld"
> and voila, meld opens and diffs the two directories. You can do the
> same with two files which are on the same directory.
>
> The problem comes when you try to compare two directories of files
> that are on different locations on your hard drive. In that case you
> cannot use the meld "send to" shortcut, because if you use it with the
> first directory, meld will just try to open it in VCS mode!
>
> If you try to do the same with a single file (rather than a directory)
> it does not work either. In fact the file that you pass to meld seems
> to be ignored, and meld just opens with the default "startup window"
> that lets you choose the mode.
>
> So I'd like to ask if there is some way around this. If not it would
> be nice to be able to tell meld not to start in VCS mode, and just
> take the input file or directory name that you pass to it and put it
> on the left panel.

There's no way around this, and I'd rather not add more command line
options if we don't have to. I've seen this dealt with on Gnome +
Nautilus by having an extension that allows you to queue up items for
comparison. See for example:
    http://my.opera.com/bachkhois/blog/2011/07/19/compare-files-with-meld-from-within-nautilus
I have no idea what the limitations of the Windows 'Send To' command
or explorer extensions are. Would it be possible to have some kind of
similar queuing implementation there?

Either way, the problem is that giving Meld a single directory is
inherently ambiguous. You'd have to have "Send To -> Meld as folder
comparison" and "Send To -> Meld as VC comparison" entries, which
seems like overkill to me.

What's the use-case distinction in Windows-land between opening
something and Send-To-ing something?

cheers,
Kai