Meld

Meld is an open source piece of software designed from the ground up to act as a visual diff and merge utility that integrates well with a wide range of Concurrent Versions Systems (CVS). It is distributed along with the GNOME desktop environment, installable as a standalone application

Features at a glance

Key features include the ability to edit files in-place, perform two-way and three-way merge and diff operations, view comparison updates on the fly, support for syntax highlighting, built-in regular expression text filtering functionality, as well as support for navigating between merges and diffs.

In addition, it lets the user to view local and global differences with changes, conflicts and insertions marked, compare two or three folders using the file-by-file method, manage files, filter out folders and files, and merge and visualize  independent changes of a single file.

Another interesting feature is the built-in support for a plethora of version control systems, among which we can mention the popular Git, Mercurial, Subversion, and Bazaar. Also, the program includes basic version control actions and a command-line interface.

Under the hood

Meld is originally written for the GNOME desktop environment, but it can also be downloaded and installed as a standalone application in other open source window managers, no matter the GNU/Linux distribution used.

It is distributed a source archive, which can be configured, compiled and installed on a wide range of Linux-based operating systems. However, the fastest and easiest way to install Meld is from the default software repositories of your distro.

Bottom line

Summing up, Meld is a great file/folder diff and merge tool for the GNU/Linux ecosystem, a unique application that combines simplicity and easy of use with a powerful and versatile architecture. It is oriented towards programmers and software developers, supporting both 64-bit and 32-bit hardware platforms.

What is new in this release:

• Fixes:
• Fix help launching on Windows (Vasily Galkin)
• Fix Windows compatibility issue with multiprocessing (Vasily Galkin)
• Fix incorrect state handling during tab close (Kai Willadsen)
• Fix commit action on a folder not working in git (Kai Willadsen)
• Bugs fixed: #196, #197

What is new in version :

• Fixes:
• Fix VC status not updating in some situations non-flattened mode (Kai Willadsen)
• Command line errors when invoking a secondary instance will no longer cause the second command to hang until the primary exits (Kai Willadsen)
• Bugs fixed: 786629
• Translations:
• Emin Tufan Cetin (tr)

What is new in version 3.17.2:

• UI changes:
• Significantly improve synchronisation of scroll bars between panes; we now try much harder to scroll all of a chunk on screen at the top and bottom of comparisons, and handle last-line-in-file cases better (Kai Willadsen)
• Place the cursor at the start of a replaced chunk instead of after it; this change should improve keyboard ergonomics when doing three-way merges, but does change our existing behaviour (Kai Willadsen)
• Remove Shift-based scroll locking; this was already broken by a GTK+ change, so this is just making it official (Kai Willadsen)
• Fixes:
• Show correct column offset in status bar for tab indents (Simon Marchi)
• Fix installation with a prefix for Python 3 changes (Ting-Wei Lan)
• Fix initial scroll-to-first-difference behaviour to avoid a race condition if the first change was on the first line (Kai Willadsen)
• Improve text wrapping behaviour in information bars, and avoid too-large allocations with long labels (Kai Willadsen)
• Work around infinite re-allocation problems and silence GTK+ allocation warnings (Kai Willadsen)
• Fix bad UI state when closing a single-instance activated window (Kai Willadsen)
• Fix bad function call when using internal git conflict resolution (Kai Willadsen)
• Translations:
• Anders Jonsson (sv)
• Andika Triwidada (id)
• Balazs Ur (hu)
• Daniel Korostil (uk)
• Emin Tufan Cetin (tr)
• Marek Cernocky' (cs)
• Milo Casagrande (it)

What is new in version 3.17.1:

• Features:
• Improve version checking, and try to show users a nice error dialog when Meld's requirements aren't installed (Vasily Galkin)
• Fixes:
• Help and documentation fixes (Anders Jonsson, Kai Willadsen)
• Re-silence GTK+ logging with glib 2.46 structured logging changes (Kai Willadsen)
• Fix chunk deletion at EOF with CRLF endings (Kai Willadsen)
• Note filter performance effects in folder preferences (Kai Willadsen)
• Fix button alignment for new chunk action buttons (Kai Willadsen)
• Improve use of the newer emblem in folder comparison by showing it only when meaningful (Kai Willadsen)
• Fix crash caused by bad colour theme lookup (Kai Willadsen)
• Translations:
• Alan Mortensen (da)
• Anders Jonsson (sv)
• Daniel Mustieles (es)
• Josef Andersson (sv)
• Marek Cernocky' (cs)
• Paul Seyfert (de)
• Piotr Drag (pl)
• Rafael Fontenelle (pt_BR)
• МироCлaв Николић (sr, sr@latin)

What is new in version 3.17.0:

• Fixes:
• Make error displaying more robust with non-ASCII locales (Vasily Galkin)
• Handle themes with scrollbar steppers better (Kai Willadsen)
• Fix a traceback when pane has no file (Claude Paroz)
• Fix triggering "Delete Change" actions from menu (Kai Willadsen)
• Handle style theme not existing (Patrick Griffis)
• Fix unintentional glib requirement bump (Kai Willadsen)
• Translations:
• Claude Paroz (fr)

What is new in version 3.16.3:

• Fixes:
• Fix bad scroll syncing and inability to move between comparison chunks in file comparisons (Vasily Galkin)
• Improve version control view behaviour when opening missing paths (Vasily Galkin)
• Fix saving of text created in blank comparison (Vasily Galkin)
• GTK+ 3.22 compatibility fixes for saving window size (Kai Willadsen)
• Fix formatted patches missing newlines in certain cases (Kai Willadsen)
• Silence GTK+ warning logging if not running in uninstalled (i.e., development) mode (Kai Willadsen)
• Update AppData (Kai Willadsen)
• Translations:
• Anders Jonsson (sv)
• Balazs Mesko (hu)
• Daniel Mustieles (es)
• Marek Cernocky' (cs)
• Mario Blattermann (de)
• Piotr Drag (pl)
• Rafael Fontenelle (pt_BR)
• Tiago Santos (pt)
• МироCлaв Николић (sr, sr@latin)

What is new in version 3.16.2:

• Fixes:
• Fix performance regression in text filtering (Kai Willadsen)
• Fix regression in respecting custom text encoding (Kai Willadsen)
• Translations:
• Andika Triwidada (id)

What is new in version 3.16.1:

• Fixes:
• Fix regression in support for file comparisons from pipes (Kai Willadsen)
• Add open build service directories to the version control filter (Dominique Leuenberger)
• Add darcs to list of loaded plugins (pbgc)
• Fix the dark style (Kai Willadsen)
• Windows build fixes (Kai Willadsen)

What is new in version 3.15.2:

• Features:
• Port to use GtkSourceView's file loader and saver helpers, bringing several benefits (Kai Willadsen)
• Loading and saving speed are significantly improved, and are asychronous
• We try a wider range of locale-specific file encodings by default, and still support user-specified default encodings (requires GtkSourceView 3.18 or later)
• We now support saving files with inconsistent newline types
• Binary files will now be loaded on a best-effort basis
• Reinstate support for Darcs; this is currently limited to very new (>2.10.3) versions (Guillaume Hoffmann)
• Folder comparisons now apply text filters in the same way as file comparisons (David Rabel)
• Add support for showing new shortcuts help dialog (Kai Willadsen, Piotr Drag)
• Preliminary support for building Meld as an xdg-app (Kai Willadsen)
• Fixes:
• Many fixes for GTK+ 3.20 theming changes and widget compatibility issues (Kai Willadsen)
• All accelerators should now consistently use the Primary key, for better integration on OSX systems (Youssef Adnan)
• Significantly improve text filter performance (Jason Gauci)
• Fix performance regression where scanning for missing files was extremely slow, especially in large repositories (Kai Willadsen)
• Fix truncated line number display in short file (Kai Willadsen)
• Fix filter dropdown not appearing below button (Kai Willadsen)
• Add more documentation on setup and installation requirements (Jesse Sheridan, Martin Thoma)
• Update the AppData to spec version 0.7+ (Richard Hughes)
• Translations:
• Anders Jonsson (sv)
• Benjamin Steinwender (de)
• Bernd Homuth (de)
• Cedric Valmary (oc)
• Daniel Mustieles (es)
• Gabor Kelemen (hu)
• Jiri Gronroos (fi)
• Luisa Ceron Perea (es)
• Marek Cernocky' (cs)
• Mario Blattermann (de)
• Muhammet Kara (tr)
• Pedro Albuquerque (pt)
• Piotr Drag (pl)
• Rafael Fontenelle (pt_BR)
• МироCлaв Николић (sr, sr@latin)

What is new in version 3.15.1:

• Features:
• Text ignored by filters is now dimmed to give some visual feedback that it's being ignored (David Rabel)
• Text filters now apply independently, improving consistency; note that this is a behaviour change as filter order no longer matters, and filters will always apply to the original (not the filtered) text (David Rabel, Kai Willadsen)
• Recent menu items now show more detail in tooltips (Alan Suran)
• Update dialog action area layout for GTK+ theme changes (Kai Willadsen)
• Fixes:
• Conflict resolution prompt now resolves properly again (Andrew Sutherland)
• Silence some GTK+ assertions on window close (Zain)
• Fix default filter issues from recent rework (Erik Schilling)
• Percent-containing commit messages no longer corrupt our recent commit messages store (Kai Willadsen)
• Fix some problems with unicode user directories on Windows (Kai Willadsen)
• Fix encoding issues when saving files with load errors (Kai Willadsen)
• Fix drawing corruption when scrolling horizontally (Kai Willadsen)
• Fix clicking on the diffmap scrolling to the wrong location (Kai Willadsen)
• Fix off-by-one drawing error for final line in file (Kai Willadsen)
• Fix introspection requires to silence startup warnings (Kai Willadsen)
• Fix clearing syncpoints (Kai Willadsen)
• Add manual appdata kudos markers (Kai Willadsen)
• PEP8 fixes (David Rabel, Kai Willadsen)
• Translations:
• Daniel Mustieles (es)
• Marek AŒernockA½ (cs)
• Milo Casagrande (it)
• Pedro Albuquerque (pt)
• Piotr DrA...g (pl)
• Rafael Fontenelle (pt_BR)

What is new in version 3.14.1:

• Features:
• Offer to open binary files externally (Pratik Dayama)
• Use locale-based default encodings (Kai Willadsen)
• Fixes:
• Fix crash with some GTK+ versions when using --output (Kai Willadsen)
• Fix merge-all action not working at all (Kai Willadsen)
• Fix creating patches with unicode path names (Kai Willadsen)
• Fix copy-to-clipboard option in patch dialog (Kai Willadsen)
• Fix diffmap alignment for new GTK+ allocation behaviour (Kai Willadsen)
• Improve float accuracy in folder comparison timestamp resolution (Kai Willadsen)
• Fix default SVN keyword filter to escape $ characters (Kai Willadsen)
• Fix display of unicode --help from command line (Kai Willadsen)
• Fix keyboard shortcut docs (Kai Willadsen)
• Don't incorrectly show identical notification for changed folder comparisons (Kai Willadsen)
• Translations:
• Polish

What is new in version 3.14.0:

• Fixes:
• Fix crash when starting folder comparison on Windows (Kai Willadsen)
• Fix bad chunk action behaviour for middle-to-right actions in three pane conflicts (Kai Willadsen)
• Documentation fixes (Anders Jonsson)
• Translations:
• Josef Andersson (sv)
• Marek AŒernockA½ (cs)

What is new in version 3.13.1:

• Features:
• Previously, Meld could show very different results in file vs. folder comparisons when the files differed in line endings. These are now much more consistent.
• In folder comparisons, applying filters now also normalises line endings (Kai Willadsen)
• In a file comparison, if the files-are-identical notification is shown when files differ in line endings, this now mentioned (Kai Willadsen)
• There is a new preferences controlling whether to apply text filters during folder comparisons, defaulting to on, which also controls line ending normalisation (Kai Willadsen)
• Help documentation has been updated with details of how text filters are applied in folder comparison (Kai Willadsen)
• Folder comparisons will now show an identical notification similar to the one used in file comparison (Kai Willadsen)
• The "New blank comparion" button now works for folder comparisons as well as file ones (Kai Willadsen)
• In folder comparisons, the expansion state of the tree is now remembered when you collapse and re-expand a row (Kai Willadsen)
• Fixes:
• Install fixes (oco)
• Code style fixes (Sandro Bonazzola)
• Better support RTL locales by flipping icons and panes consistently (Kai Willadsen)
• Fixes for file encoding when saving with bad or missing encodings (Kai Willadsen)
• More consistent dialog handling and appearance (Kai Willadsen)
• Deprecation updates and compatibility fixes (Kai Willadsen)
• Fix bad comparison offset when multiple line breaks occurred on a single line (don't ask) (Kai Willadsen)
• Unicode fixes for file change notifications (Kai Willadsen)
• Warnings (such as deprecation warnings) are now explicitly silenced in stable Meld (Kai Willadsen)
• Folder actions are now disabled while Meld is still scanning folders (Kai Willadsen)
• Fix some command line handling for ambiguous relative paths and invalid URIs (Kai Willadsen)
• Fix updating the comparison map when a file is updated within Meld (Kai Willadsen)
• Translations:
• Anders Jonsson (sv)
• Cheng-Chia Tseng (zh_TW)
• Christian Kirbach (de)
• Daniel Mustieles (es)
• Jordi Mas (ca)
• Marek AŒernockA½ (cs)
• Matej UrbanAiA (sl)
• Piotr DrA...g (pl)
• Samir Ribic (bs)
• Tibor Kaputa (sk)

What is new in version 3.12.3:

• Fixes:
• Fix inconsistent file chooser when cancelling file selection (Kai Willadsen)
• UTF-8 encode patches created from the patch dialog (Kai Willadsen)
• Fix text-wrapping reset caused by the commit dialog (Kai Willadsen)
• Fix text background display on certain themes (Kai Willadsen)
• Fix for launching Meld with certain Git environment variables (Kai Willadsen)
• Add GTK's settings.ini file for font blurriness fix on Windows (Kai Willadsen)
• Translations:
• BalAzs Asr (hu)

What is new in version 3.12.2:

• Fixes:
• Fix display of change action buttons and line numbers when line numbers are shown (Kai Willadsen)
• Fix positioning of the change action buttons (Kai Willadsen)
• Fix tab width setting not working correctly (Kai Willadsen)
• Fix starting comparison of Subversion checkouts from a subdirectory (Kai Willadsen)
• Fix starting Meld from a differently-named symlink (Kai Willadsen)
• Ignore errors when copying file metadata if the destination file system doesn't support it (Kai Willadsen)
• Automatically recompile stale in-place gschemas (Kai Willadsen)
• Handle SIGINT to support previous quit-on-Ctrl-C behaviour (Kai Willadsen)
• Translations:
• Dimitris Spingos (el)
• Marek AŒernockA½ (cs)

What is new in version 3.12.1:

• Fixes:
• Work around change colours not displaying on GTK+ 3.14 (Kai Willadsen)
• Fix missing cache opcodes in some circumstances (Kai Willadsen)
• Fix text view expansion when resizing patch dialog (Kai Willadsen)
• Build fix to always include C locale when LINGUAS is set (Kai Willadsen)
• Translations:
• (pt_BR)
• (sr, sr@latin)

What is new in version 3.12.0:

• Fixes:
• Ignore missing files when cleaning up our recently-used folder (Kai Willadsen)
• Guard against dialogs missing properties they should definitely have (Kai Willadsen)
• Remove old property from patch dialog (Kai Willadsen)
• Translations:
• Indonesian
• Czech
• Polish

What is new in version 3.11.4:

• Fixes:
• Only apply the auto merge flag to the last comparison started (Kai Willadsen)
• Fix install layout issues on Debian-based systems (Kai Willadsen)
• Fix "Open External" for files on Windows (Kai Willadsen)
• Record installation directory and executable location on Windows (Kai Willadsen)
• Revert to using latin1 as a fallback encoding; this will be reverted in the next unstable series (Kai Willadsen)
• Translations:
• Andika Triwidada (id)
• Daniel Mustieles (es)
• fr33domlover (he)
• Jiri GrA¶nroos (fi)
• Josef Andersson (sv)
• Marek AŒernockA½ (cs)
• Piotr DrA...g (pl)

What is new in version 3.11.3:

• Features:
• Manually handle app menu fallback for non-Gnome shells (Kai Willadsen)
• Save and restore window maximisation state (Kai Willadsen)
• Fixes:
• Add missing/incomplete "Language" entries (Lars Wendler)
• Miscellaneous code cleanups (Christoph Brill)
• Handle broken locale settings better (Kai Willadsen)
• Fix size allocation issues in preferences UI (Kai Willadsen)
• Update shebang for environments with Python 3 as default (Kai Willadsen)
• Translations:
• Daniel Mustieles (es)
• Marek Cernocky' (cs)
• Piotr Drag (pl)
• Rafael Ferreira (pt_BR)

What is new in version 1.8.6:

• Fixes:
• Handle spaces in filenames with external editor (Kai Willadsen)
• Fix storing translated column names in configuration (Kai Willadsen)
• Backport fix for "Open externally" sensitivity setting (Daniel Macks)
• Fix support for fake comparisons in null VC (Kai Willadsen)
• Fix "Same" filter for shallow comparison cases (Kai Willadsen)
• Translations:
• Benjamin Steinwender(de)
• Daniel Mustieles (es)
• Inaki Larranaga Murgoitio (eu)
• Lasse Liehu (fi)

What is new in version 3.11.2:

• Features:
• File and folder comparison panes can now be resized (Marco Brito)
• Folder comparisons now support scrolling between chunks using the mouse wheel in the link map, like file comparisons (Kai Willadsen)
• Fixes:
• Don't draw spurious actions for equal chunks (Kai Willadsen)
• Remove default sourceview behaviour for Alt+Left/Right (Kai Willadsen)
• Fix storing translated column names in configuration (Kai Willadsen)
• Several fixes for multiple windows in single-instance handling:
• Resolve relative paths relative to the correct instance (Kai Willadsen)
• Don't create windows in the original instance when the calling instance errors out (Kai Willadsen)
• Raise the correct window for new windows in the same instance (Kai Willadsen)
• Exit correctly for command line errors in the calling instance (Kai Willadsen)
• Fix display of unicode paths in repositories (Kai Willadsen)
• Fix handling of unicode paths in recent files store (Kai Willadsen)
• Improve behaviour of Open External action, and handle spaces in filenames for the custom editor option (Kai Willadsen)
• Improve support custom installation prefixes (Kai Willadsen)
• Translations:
• Benjamin Steinwender (de)
• Daniel Mustieles (es)
• Lasse Liehu (fi)
• Marek Cernocky' (cs)
• Matej Urbancic (sl)
• Piotr Drag (pl)
• Rafael Ferreira (pt_BR)
• Yuri Myasoedov (ru)

What is new in version 3.11.1:

• Features:
• New (alpha) infrastructure for stand-alone Windows builds (Kai Willadsen)
• Display renames and metadata in Bazaar repositories (Louis des Landes)
• Improved tab labels in version control comparisons (Kai Willadsen)
• New merge-order preference to accompany comparison-order (Kai Willadsen)
• Added a prompt to mark a conflict as resolved from file comparison (Kai Willadsen)
• Fixes:
• Fix filtering for shallow folder comparisons (Casey)
• Several install and distribution fixes (Kai Willadsen)
• Sundry bug fixes (Dominique Leuenberger, Thomas Klausner, Louis des Landes, Kai Willadsen)
• Translations:
• Andika Triwidada (id)
• Benjamin Steinwender (de)
• Daniel Mustieles (es)
• Facundo Dario Illanes (es)
• Inaki Larranaga Murgoitio (eu)
• Jiri GrA¶nroos (fi)
• Marek AŒernockA½ (cs)
• Milo Casagrande (it)
• Piotr DrA...g (pl)
• Rafael Ferreira (pt_BR)
• Tom Tryfonidis (el)
• Ville-Pekka Vainio (fi)
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  22 Jun 18 in Developer Tools, Version Control Systems