Diffuse

Diffuse is a simple, neat, free and cross-platform graphical desktop utility that can be used for comparing and merging text files. The application also integrates a diff viewer that is compatible with several popular revision control systems.

Features at a glance

Diffuse lets users to easily and quickly compare various text files side-by-side, as well as to edit these files while they are compared. It features line-matching, highlighting of character differences, and supports UTF-8 encoded Unicode.

Line matching can be manually corrected by the user, and the following revision control systems are supported at the moment: Git, Subversion (SVN), Mercurial, Bazaar, Darcs, CVS, Monotone, SVK and RCS. Support for keyboard shortcuts is also implemented.

In addition, the program supports syntax highlighting for the C++, C#, Bourne Shell, Pascal, Octave, JSON, C Shell, R, Python, JSP, PHP, Perl, SQL, Tcl, HTML, VB.NET, Ruby, Patch, VHDL, XML, GLSL, INI, Fortran, Gettext, CSS, JavaScript, Java, and other languages.

Easy to use and intuitive GUI

Its GUI (Graphical User Interface) is intuitive and easy to use, as it will offer you all the tools and settings you need to get started with comparing and merging text files in no time. After opening the application, all you have to do is to open the two text files you want to compare or merge.

Additionally, you can open a commit, modified files, reload files, as well as to create new 2-way, 3-way or custom file merge jobs. From the View menu you will be able to easily navigate between diffs, tabs and pane.

Under the hood and supported operating systems

Taking a look under the hood of Diffuse, we can notice that it has been written in the Python programming language around the GTK+ GUI toolkit. The software is designed to work with the Linux, Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems.

For your convenience, it is available for download as native installers for distributions of Liux supporting either of the DEB or RPM package managers. Both 32-bit and 64-bit hardware platforms are supported at this time.

What is new in this release:

• This version adds Czech and Polish localization, better support for UTF-16 and UTF-32 encoded text, and a new menu item for opening n-way file merges.
• Syntax highlighting has been added for Erlang and OpenCL files.
• Several minor bugs were also fixed.

What is new in version 0.4.6:

• This version adds support for Subversion 1.7.
• The command line option for discovering files modified by a particular commit has been updated to work with all version control systems supported by Diffuse and now has a corresponding menu item.
• This release also fixes a bug that caused the wrong revision to be shown when working on a branch in Mercurial, and updates Git support to distinguish between staged and unstaged files.
• Syntax highlighting has been added for R files.

What is new in version 0.4.5:

• Diffuse now includes an Italian localization.
• Command-line arguments to show a label instead of the actual file name (--label or -L) and an option to start the cursor at a given line (--line) have been added.
• Also new are menu items to go to the first and last tab, syntax highlighting for JSON files, and a preference to display the right margin.
• Diffuse now uses a patience diff-based algorithm to align lines.
• State information is now stored in ~/.local/share/diffuse.
• Several minor bugs were also fixed.

What is new in version 0.4.4:

• Diffuse now includes Korean and Russian localizations.
• Git support now recognizes conflicts that occur when re-applying the stash.
• The search dialog is automatically populated with the currently selected text.
• Shift-ScrollWheel can now be used to scroll horizontally.
• Pane headers now have tool tips allowing easy viewing of long file names.
• Several bugs were fixed that prevented Diffuse from working with files containing non-English characters in their paths.

What is new in version 0.4.1:

• Diffuse now has Japanese and simplified Chinese localizations.
• Tabs can now be closed with the middle mouse button and quickly navigated with the right mouse button menu.
• New menu items and buttons were added for push style merge operations, dismissing edits, and recovering closed tabs.
• New preferences were also added to enable or disable line numbers and specify the behavior when quiting.
• The directory for storing configuration files now follows the XDG standard.

What is new in version 0.3.4:

• syntax highlighting for .plist, GLSL, SConscript, and SConstruct files
• status bar now explains how to navigate between modes
• added labels to indicate syntax highlighting rules, encoding, and format
• Subversion 1.6 support
• German translation
• added '--examplesdir=' and '--mandir=' options to install.py
• renamed the '--python-interpreter=' installer option to '--pythonbin='
• minor bug fixes

What is new in version 0.3.2:

• POSIX installer with '--destdir=' and '--files-only' options for packagers
• vi-like keybindings for line mode
• '-m' option to open modified files in separate tabs
• 'Merge From Left Then Right' and 'Merge From Right Then Left' menu items
• drag-n-drop support
• preferences for behaviour of tabs
• files with edits now tagged with '*'
• auto indent
• 'Open File In New Tab...' and 'Open Modified Files...' menu items
• 'Save All' menu item
• mac-style line ending support
• new end of line display behaviour
• improved organisation of menu items
• button bar no longer grabs keyboard focus
• removed dependence on urllib module
• errors are now reported on stderr
• removed TODO list
• minor bug fixes

What is new in version 0.3.0:

• notification on focus change when files change on disk
• menu items for adjusting indentation
• syntax highlighting for Objective-C++
• '-c' option now works with CVS-style revision numbers
• window title now describes current tab
• search settings now persist across sessions
• minor bug fixes

What is new in version 0.2.15:

• This release focused on user interface polish.
• Panes and tabs can now be manually reorganized and window scrolling is now smoother.
• Diffuse will now request confirmation before writing over changed files.
• The behavior of the tab key can now be customized and the home/end keys may now be used in line editing mode.
• New menu items and command options were added to select versions around a commit and to jump to particular lines.
• More file types are recognized for syntax highlighting.
• Several minor bugs were also fixed.