CODEWITHSUNDEEP
gitwinmerge
MHebes
MHebes

Reputation: 3247

WinMerge - ignore all whitespace including newlines and formatting changes

How can I ignore "code style" changes while using WinMerge as a difftool? Specifically across two commits.

So that

thing
{
  a,
  b
}

and

thing { a, b }

would be treated as identical.

Essentially this question, but for winmerge rather than diff.

.gitconfig:

[diff]
    tool = winmerge
[difftool]
    prompt = false
[difftool "winmerge"]
    cmd = "$HOME/scripts/winmerge.sh" "$LOCAL" "$REMOTE"
[mergetool]
    prompt = false
    keepBackup = false
    keepTemporaries = false
[merge]
    tool = winmerge
[mergetool "winmerge"]
    cmd = "'C:/Program Files (x86)/WinMerge/WinMergeU.exe'" -e -u -fm -dl \"Local\" -dr \"Remote\" "$LOCAL" "$MERGED" "$REMOTE"

(winmerge.sh just calls WinMergeU.exe -e -u -wr "$1" "$2")

None of the command line options seem to fit, and I think line filters won't work because they are per-line.

Upvotes: 18

Views: 27367

Answers (6)

Silvio Bandeira
Silvio Bandeira

Reputation: 1

While it is not possible in winmerge, Emacs does it easily.

In 'ediff' mode you can press '#' key twice in the control panel (it is read as a command). It will ignore line break differences altogether.

Emacs is a wonderful editing environment but, unfortunately, its ediff-mode is not a very user friendly tool. The control panel is in a different window which is a bit confusing. See the final part of the youtube tutorial below for a tweak that puts the control panel in the main window.

Read more:

https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_mono/ediff.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSvsAutseO0

Upvotes: 0

Charlie
Charlie

Reputation: 753

These options work for me:

WinMerge -> Edit -> Options -> Compare -> General ->

  • -> Whitespaces -> Ignore all;
  • -> Ignore blank lines;
  • -> Ignore carriage return differences (Windows/Unix/Mac)
  • etc.

The answer was taken from https://superuser.com/questions/174275/can-i-compare-only-file-contents

Upvotes: 23

BurninLeo
BurninLeo

Reputation: 4484

One aspect of the issue is indent, which may vary between spaces and tabs, or just may be different. Using the replacement filters in WinMerge whis is easy to solve.

screenshot from replacement filter

(found in tools -> filter, use a single space in the "replace by" column)

Unfortunately, [\s\r\n] won't work in the replacement filter to take care of newlines. This is probably an issue of performance.

Upvotes: 0

MHebes
MHebes

Reputation: 3247

To answer my own question with the benefit of more time:

  • This is not possible with WinMerge
  • difftastic does this for read-only diffs at the cost of speed and memory
  • No tool that I'm aware of does writable diffs (e.g. conflict resolution) while showing semantic-based diffs

Not-quite-there solutions:

Ignore blank lines; Ignore carriage return differences (Windows/Unix/Mac)

This ignores line feed differences, and full blank line differences, but does not compare files semantically. It does help in certain simple cases.

Line filter ^\s*$

Same as "Ignore blank lines"

.gitattributes formatter with textconv for specific file types

This is the closest option for read-only diffs, with the downsides of:

  • needing to define a separate attribute (and formatter) for each file type
  • displaying the formatted versions of the files rather than the original

My current solution

  • For conflict resolution, use WinMerge as-is with as much of the "ignore" options turned on as possible. Resolving conflicts with formatting changes is a massive pain no matter what you do, so try to isolate formatting changes to their own merges.
  • For diff viewing, use difftastic which uses tree-sitter to compare code on an AST level rather than a textual level
  • When difftastic is slow or hogging memory, fall back to diff/WinMerge/VSCode

Upvotes: 1

LeoMan
LeoMan

Reputation: 327

In addition of ignoring white spaces/blank lines/...etc. Do the following

  • Go to Tools->Filter
  • Select "Linefilters" tab
  • Check Enable Line Filters
  • Add the following expr, and make sure it is checked ^\s*$

enter image description here

-Refresh the comparison

Upvotes: 0

JD Frias
JD Frias

Reputation: 4686

You could add a .gitattributes for your file. This would run a tool to normalize/beautify/prettify both files before comparison.

This will run .json files through json_pp before compare:

echo "*.json diff=json" >> .gitattributes
git config diff.json.textconv json_pp

Check out git documentation for details: https://git-scm.com/docs/gitattributes

Source: https://t-a-w.blogspot.com/2016/05/sensible-git-diff-for-json-files.html

Upvotes: 0

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