Question

When Mercurial is running under cygwin, it’s a bit tricky to figure out how to spawn WinMerge to resolve merge conflicts. How can I do this?

Answer 1

The trick is that cygwin paths are not the same as Windows paths, so you need a little script that converts the cygwin paths to Windows paths before passing them as arguments to WinMerge.

Here’s how to do it:

(1) Create a shell script in /usr/bin/winmerge as follows:

#!/bin/sh '/cygdrive/c/Program Files/WinMerge/WinMergeU.EXE' /e /ub /dl other /dr local `cygpath -aw $1` `cygpath -aw $2` `cygpath -aw $3` 

Note: cygpath converts path names. If WinMerge isn’t in the default location, change the path here.

(2) Make that file executable

 chmod +x /usr/bin/winmerge 

(3) Add the following to your ~/.hgrc file:

[ui] merge = winmerge  [merge-tools] winmergeu.executable=/usr/bin/winmerge winmergeu.args=$other $local $output winmergeu.fixeol=True winmergeu.checkchanged=True winmergeu.gui=False 

Note! You probably already have a [ui] section with your name in it. Remember to merge my changes with yours, don’t just add a new [ui] section. For example, my .hgrc looks like this:

[ui] username = Joel Spolsky <[e-mail]> merge = winmergeu  [extensions] fetch =  [merge-tools] winmergeu.executable=/usr/bin/winmerge winmergeu.args=$other $local $output winmergeu.fixeol=True winmergeu.checkchanged=True winmergeu.gui=False