[Kdiff3-user] "virtual" directory compare

[Wladimir v. d. L. <la...@gm...>]

Hello KDiff3 developers and users,

First, congratulations, in my opinion kdiff3 is the best visual diff/merge
tool by far. I especially like the directory comparison.

One of my gripes about version control systems is that they pop up the diff
program for each file separately (git difftool, clearcase code inspection,
etc all have this problem). This is because they create two or three
temporary files, and call the diff tool for each file to be diffed/merged.

What would be the best way to use KDiff3 directory compare functionality in
this case, as the directory structure exists nowhere on disk?

The simplest (I guess) would be to make a front-end script that exports the
changed files in a temporary directory structure and call kdiff3 on it.
Personally, I don't really like the idea of creating a temporary directory
structure that much, as they need a (potentially) dangerous recursive delete
to clean up, and leave waste files when the program exits unexpectedly.

As it is not practical to pass all that data [(path, (date1, content1),
(date2, content2), (date3, content3) ), ...] on the command line either,
I've been thinking about adding some kind of interface to provide "virtual"
files to KDiff3, for example via DBus-QT.  On the other hand, I don't want
to be dependent on the VFS services offered by KDE, as that wouldn't port to
windows...

The other option would be to build the actual version control functionality
into KDiff3 (for example, using plugins), but I don't like that, as I don't
want to make it specific to any VCS, I just want another script or
application be able to invoke KDiff3 and compare anything.

So, overall, I guess the option to just create a temporary tree, even though
a bit ugly, might be best...

Any input on this?

Cheers,
Wladimir