GIT WinMerge Setup

How to setup WinMerge as the GIT difftool

GIT has built in support for using WinMerge as the difftool. The only problem that I’ve found is that WinMerge doesn’t handle added or deleted files correctly. I found a script that fixes this issue and the following steps will detail how to set it all up.

1. Download the winmerge.sh at this repo
2. Move the winmerge.sh file into “C:\Program Files\Git\bin”

GIT Diff Tool Setup

Configure GIT to use WinMerge by executing the following commands (You may need to use –replace-all instead of –add if you have previously set these settings):

• git config --global --add diff.tool winmerge
• git config --global --add difftool.winmerge.path "C:\Program Files\Git\bin\winmerge.sh"

By default, GIT will prompt you for each diff to confirm if you wish to diff the file. You can bypass this behavior in two ways:

1. Pass the “-y” or “–no-prompt” option when you invoke “git difftool”
2. Turn it off globally by executing this command:
   • git config --global --add difftool.prompt false

If you performed all of the steps above then you should see some handy output on the command line during the “git difftool” command and a nice blank panel when comparing against added/deleted files in WinMerge.