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Asked: 2026-05-20T01:04:41+00:00

All: I want to use kdiff to merge all files with a certain suffix

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All:

I want to use kdiff to merge all files with a certain suffix (say *.c, *.h) and I want to do two things (turn off premerge and use internal:other) for all files with another suffix (say *.mdl). The purpose of this is to allow me to employ a type of ‘clobber merge’ for a specific file type (ie: un-mergable files like configurations, auto-generated C, models, etc..)

In my .hgrc I’ve tried:

[merge-tools]
kdiff3=
clobbermerge=internal:other
clobbermerge.premerge = False

[merge-patterns]
**.c = kdiff3
**.h = kdiff3
**.mdl = clobbermerge

but it still triggers kdiff3 for all files. Thoughts?

An extension of this would be to perform a ‘clobber merge’ on a directory – but once the syntax is clear for a file suffix, the dir should be easy.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Merge tools can use any executable file. To set up a merge tool which always overwrites $base with $other, you can use the following:

    [merge-tools]
clobbermerge.priority = 100
clobbermerge.premerge = False
clobbermerge.args = $other $output
clobbermerge.executable = <copy executable>

    When using this strategy on Windows, there is one problem. You cannot simply replace <copy executable> with the copy shell command. For some reason, Mercurial fails to find shell commands in this context. I have not tried this on *nix.

    To work around this problem, you can create a distribute a batch file that performs the copy. It simply needs to run: copy %1 %2. Once placed on your PATH, you can set clobbermerge.executable=clobber.bat.

    If you have kdiff3 installed (comes with TortoiseHg on Windows), you can get the same results without the external batch file using a configuration like this:

    [merge-tools]
clobbermerge.priority = 100
clobbermerge.premerge = False
clobbermerge.args = --auto $base $other $other -o $output
clobbermerge.executable = kdiff3

    The key to this configuration is the args field:

    • --auto: tells kdiff3 not to open the GUI if there are no conflicts
    • $base $other $other: tells kdiff3 to only use $other
    • $output: tells kdiff3 the name of the output file
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