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How to use vimdiff as the subversion diff tool

vimdiff is fantastic. Follow these instructions to make subversion use vimdiff when you run svn diff.

Get this diffwrap.sh script and save it anywhere. I saved mine in my $HOME/bin directory. Make sure to make it executable! I’m showing it below:


#!/bin/sh

# Configure your favorite diff program here.
DIFF="/usr/bin/vimdiff"

# Subversion provides the paths we need as the sixth and seventh
# parameters.
LEFT=${6}
RIGHT=${7}

# Call the diff command (change the following line to make sense for
# your merge program).
$DIFF $LEFT $RIGHT

# Return an errorcode of 0 if no differences were detected, 1 if some were.
# Any other errorcode will be treated as fatal.

Then change your $HOME/.subversion/config file to point at that script:


[helpers]
diff-cmd = /home/matt/bin/diffwrap.sh

Then go diff a file!

See this section of the svn book for all the details.

Posted in Programming, subversion, vim.

By matt
August 29, 2007

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