Meld magic

Meld is the slickest, most intuitive, best looking different and merge tool around. It's on the Git list of tools so in your global config file set the key diff.tool to meld and it just works. It also works pretty painlessly in Windows.

You might see a warning when you call Meld from the command line, but ignore it.
One of the nicest features on Linux is VCS integration. It works with great with Git as a desktop app to view different of modified or staged files and will even commit them from Meld!

Update (2012-03-13): If you want a windows .ico file I found one here on Harvest of Gnar whatever that is. BTW: I ditched my windows batch file, and just used a shell script, which I needed for Git anyway. It has 2 lines:

#! /bin/bash
python meld "$@"

Then I saved it as meld.sh, but I also made a link to it ln -s meld.sh meld, which basically copied the exact same file and saved it as meld. Finally I made a shortcut to the desktop and used the icon from above. To add it to Git just use git config --global diff.tool meld. Then git difftool to see your diffs in Meld.

Update (2012-03-23): Just learned I can drag and drop files directly into the choose files dialog! Fast and easy and way cooler than browsing to them. Now if I could just whip up a quick shell integration...

If you're a cygwin nut, see my post on building Meld for Cygwin.

python psyched

Yes, I am psyched about Python. I can not believe I have not been using this for the past 7+ years! It totally kicks ass! Of course I love that it is open source, and that there are so many well established libraries for it. This make MATLAB look like AOL; paying for the internet, really?! "I typed it into the internet, but it didn't work?!" MATLAB seems archaic in some ways compared to Python. I cannot wait to start using this everyday. Could I completely replace everything I do (in MATLAB) with Python?

Breaking Bytes

Since I started trying to develop Android, web and other apps, I started another blog Breaking Bytes. There are links to SifterReader an Android app that lets you read your Sifter issues. I also post updates and other relevant info related to the apps. Enjoy!

KDIFF3 katastrophe

Installing KDIFF3 added over 50 packages to my box! Basically installing KDE on my GNOME desktop. Really, a merge tool depends on a desktop?! Uninstalling took 2 hours, since Deborphan didn't recognize KDE as an orphan, so I had to manually get the ball rolling.
In short, unless you are already using KDE or you just really love KDIFF3, I suggest sticking with a GNOME or Tk based diff/merge tool, like Meld or TkDiff.