RE: difftool sends malformed path to exernal tool on Windows

From: Paul Lotz <plotz@lsst.org>
Date: Feb 24, 2014, 16:44 UTC
Message-ID: <000801cf317f$ac1be2b0$0453a810$@lsst.org>
In-Reply-To: <20140221103821.GA21414@gmail.com>

David,

Thanks for the helpful reply.

As you suggested, I modified the .gitconfig file to have:
[difftool "test"]
	cmd = echo \"$LOCAL\" \"$REMOTE\"

and ran $ git difftool -t test

An example of the the resulting console output is: C:/Users/Paul/AppData/Local/Temp/I8L2Bc_WriteTestParameters.vi Commands/StartAutomatedTest/WriteTestParameters.vi

Paul

-----Original Message-----
From: David Aguilar [mailto:davvid@gmail.com] 
Sent: Friday, February 21, 2014 3:38 AM
To: Paul Lotz
Cc: git@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: difftool sends malformed path to exernal tool on Windows

On Mon, Feb 17, 2014 at 03:14:01PM -0700, Paul Lotz wrote:

Show 7 quoted lines

> From the Git Bash command line, I enter $ git difftool
> 
> and type ‘y’ when the file I want to difference appears.  Git 
> correctly calls the external diff tool (LVCompare.exe), but the path 
> for the remote file Git passes to that tool is malformed (e.g., 
> C:\/Users/Paul/AppData/Local/Temp/QCpqLa_calcLoadCellExcitation.vi).
> Obviously the \/ (backslash forwardslash) combination is incorrect.

If this is the case then difftool is not the only one with this problem.

We use the GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF mechanism to run difftool under "git diff", so it may be that the paths are mangled by "git diff" itself. I don't really know enough about msysgit to know for sure, though.

What do you see if you create a dummy tool which just does "echo"?

[difftool "test"]
	cmd = echo \"$LOCAL\" \"$REMOTE\"

Then run:

$ git difftool -t test

Show 12 quoted lines

> For the record, I have successfully made calls to LVCompare.exe 
> manually from a Windows command prompt directly (without Git).
> 
> The relevant portion of the .gitconfig file is:
> [diff]
>      tool = "LVCompare"
> [difftool "LVCompare"]
>      cmd = 'C:/Program Files (x86)/National Instruments/Shared/LabVIEW 
> Compare/LVCompare.exe' \"$LOCAL\"  \"$REMOTE\"
> 
> 
> For the record, the operating system is Windows 8.1.

Do any msysgit folks know whether GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF is a known issue? -- David