Re: difftool sends malformed path to exernal tool on Windows

From: David Aguilar <davvid@gmail.com>
Date: Mar 3, 2014, 00:35 UTC
Message-ID: <CAJDDKr751=c2AOBfjbg2_im6UCBvwWSVjJ7QX8=76vXMsLSw4g@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <000801cf317f$ac1be2b0$0453a810$@lsst.org>

On Mon, Feb 24, 2014 at 8:44 AM, Paul Lotz <plotz@lsst.org> wrote:

Show 13 quoted lines

> 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

Hmm. That's interesting.

The next test: replace "echo" with "cat".

Are the contents of both files printed?

If so, then the next thing to try is running:

LVCompare.exe [same paths printed by echo]

and then seeing if it does the right thing.

Could it be that LVCompare.exe is getting tripped up by the forward slashes?

I'm not familiar enough with how msysgit mangles paths before launching programs. It may be that the C:/foo/bar/baz path is getting manged (that's my current guess), but I really don't know.

Another tip I've read online is that launching git via "cmd.exe" may avoid the path mangling. Sorry I'm not more helpful in this area.

Another workaround you can do is to place a shell script wrapper around LVCompare.exe that replaces C:\/ with / and then launches the real LVCompare.exe; that's a workaround, but it could work.

I hope that helps shed some light on what may be going on.

-- 
David