CODEWITHSUNDEEP
gitvisual-studio-2015
CodeJockey
CodeJockey

Reputation: 154

Visual Studio 2015 Git "Failed to start the configured compare tool."

I wanted to run a diff on a file in my project which should be a simple task, and when I select Compare with Unmodified, I get the error:

Source Control - Git
Failed to start the configured compare tool.

I've looked at the .gitconfig file that was auto-generated by VS2015 and as far as I can tell there is nothing wrong with it.

[merge]
    tool = vsdiffmerge
[diff]
    tool = vsdiffmerge
[core]
    editor = \"C:/Program Files (x86)/GitExtensions/GitExtensions.exe\" fileeditor
    autocrlf = true
[credential]
[filter "lfs"]
    clean = git-lfs clean %f
    smudge = git-lfs smudge %f
    required = true
[difftool]
    prompt = false
[difftool "vsdiffmerge"]
    cmd = \"C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\\Common7\\IDE\\vsdiffmerge.exe\" \"$LOCAL\" \"$REMOTE\" //t
[difftool "vsdiffmerge"]
    keepbackup = false
[mergetool]
    prompt = false
[mergetool "vsdiffmerge"]
    cmd = \"C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\\Common7\\IDE\\vsdiffmerge.exe\" \"$REMOTE\" \"$LOCAL\" \"$BASE\" \"$MERGED\" //m
trustexitcode = true

Any thoughts?

Upvotes: 4

Views: 4274

Answers (4)

Michael Hutter
Michael Hutter

Reputation: 1542

After a lot of hours of searching the cause of this problem I found out the following:

  • The problem only occurs if I try to compare the changes of a file which is already open in Visual Studio

Solution/Workaround: Close the file, after that run the diff on that file

Upvotes: 0

Hakan Fıstık
Hakan Fıstık

Reputation: 19511

Restarting Visual Studio solved the problem for me
I am using Visual Studio 2019

Very General Advice (could or NOT be helpful to solve this specific problem)

  1. Update Git
  2. Update GitHub extension
  3. Update Visual Studio

Upvotes: 7

John Hollander
John Hollander

Reputation: 31

If reinstalling Git doesn't help, there is another solution that I've found for a specific case.

If your project lies under a sub-directory of the main Git repository directory that has its own Git repository, deleting the repository in the sub-directory will fix the issue. This could be the case if you had a Git repository before and decided you wanted a different repository that had a larger scope than just the project you were working on and didn't delete the old Git repository files.

Upvotes: 1

CodeJockey
CodeJockey

Reputation: 154

Uninstall all versions of Git on the machine and reinstall the version needed. Seemed to work for me.

Upvotes: 1

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