Using meld on Mac

using_meld_on_mac.md

Using Meld merging tool on Mac

There are two ways of installing meld on osx (May 2023), using brew and .dmg package (from @yousseb). Since I found https://yousseb.github.io/meld/, I've installed it with .dmg package, but having macOS Ventura Version 13.4 (22F66) in place, it's not even starting for me. So I tried brew installation, and the application is working as expected, including symlink to start it from the terminal.

Using brew formulae: https://formulae.brew.sh/cask/meld

brew install --cask meld

# set meld as your default git mergetool
git config --global merge.tool meld

Requires: macOS >= 10.13 meld has been officially discontinued upstream. It may stop working correctly (or at all) in recent versions of macOS.

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Previous docs

• Alternative method (by @yousseb), try .dmg package yourself: https://yousseb.github.io/meld (caveat: project haven't been updated since Jul 2022).

• Legacy methods (including old osx versions): https://gist.github.com/p1nox/6102015/4fa2a9ba9379879a35e113921770c85e09861e8a

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Troubleshooting:

• If meld doesn't start from terminal, try this, modify the /usr/local/Caskroom/meld/3.19.2-r6,osx-15/meld.wrapper.sh script installed by brew to the following:

#!/bin/sh
rm -rf ~/Library/Saved\ Application\ State/org.gnome.meld.savedState
exec '/Applications/Meld.app/Contents/MacOS/Meld' "$@"

@yousseb
Thanks so much ! Your meld.dmg is very very helpful. FYI, I have been using DiffMerge for mac and that works very well.

It took a bit to configure the filters for Meld... like removing .svn .target *.class etc etc.

In general DiffMerge behaves more like a normal Mac app and provides a more condensed results window. Meld uses a different file picker, and shows all folders along with difference results. So if I have 400 folders and two changes, DiffMerge just shows two lines, one for each different file, while Meld shows all the folders and down the list, I would find the two different files.

Also, the color coding on Meld is nicer.

Anyways ... thanks again !

John

Great dmg @yousseb!

Update: For those who have problems in newer versions Homebrew/legacy-homebrew#36824

If you try:

$ brew install meld
Error: No available formula for meld 
Searching formulae...
Searching taps...`

Instead try:

$ brew install homebrew/x11/meld

Thanks for the dmg @yousseb, very useful.

python crashes for me too!

Well the dmg version works smoothly on Yosemite thanks @yousseb

Need to install Xcode and do "xcode-select --install" before you can do "brew install".

python crashes for me

@p1nox Do you can update the brew install line for brew install homebrew/gui/meld ?

any chance to increase the font size? Do you guys know how to do that?

Launched successfully

👍 for the font size issue.

I seem to recall that some time ago you used to have some way to configure gtk properties for all the gtk-based applications.

I guess it's brew install caskroom/cask/meld now.

In case you are on High Sierra and having

frozen: ImportError
Cannot import: GTK+
dlopen(/Applications/Meld.app/Contents/Resources/lib/python2.7/gi/_gi.so, 2): Symbol not found: _inflateValidate
  Referenced from: /System/Library/Frameworks/ImageIO.framework/Versions/A/Resources/libPng.dylib
  Expected in: /Applications/Meld.app/Contents/Frameworks/libz.1.dylib
 in /System/Library/Frameworks/ImageIO.framework/Versions/A/Resources/libPng.dylib

See: yousseb/meld#51

I have just managed to install and lauch meld with the following steps:
$ brew tap homebrew/cask
$ brew cask install meld

Thank you @p1nox for the gist!

In case you are on High Sierra and having

frozen: ImportError
Cannot import: GTK+
dlopen(/Applications/Meld.app/Contents/Resources/lib/python2.7/gi/_gi.so, 2): Symbol not found: _inflateValidate
  Referenced from: /System/Library/Frameworks/ImageIO.framework/Versions/A/Resources/libPng.dylib
  Expected in: /Applications/Meld.app/Contents/Frameworks/libz.1.dylib
 in /System/Library/Frameworks/ImageIO.framework/Versions/A/Resources/libPng.dylib

See: yousseb/meld#51

Worked!