About Meld

Meld is a visual diff and merge tool targeted at developers. Meld helps you compare files, directories, and version controlled projects. It provides two- and three-way comparison of both files and directories, and supports many version control systems including Git, Mercurial, Bazaar, CVS and Subversion.

Meld helps you review code changes, understand patches, and makes enormous merge conflicts slightly less painful.

Meld is licensed under the GPL v2 or later.

Requirements

Python 3.6
pycairo (Python3 bindings for cairo without GObject layer)
PyGObject 3.36 (Python3 bindings for GObject introspection)
gsettings-desktop-schemas

And following packages with GObject introspection:

GLib 2.36
Pango
PangoCairo
GTK+ 3.22
GtkSourceView 4.0

Build requirements

Python 3.6
Meson 0.48
Ninja
gettext
GLib 2.36 and its development utilities such as glib-compile-schemas

For Windows build requirements, see mingw-common section .gitlab-ci.yml

Running

You do not need to build Meld in order to run it. Meld can be run directly from this source directory by running:

$ bin/meld

Unix users should get Meld from their distribution package manager, or from Flathub.

Windows users should download the provided MSIs on the Meld home page.

OSX users can install Meld using Homebrew (or Macports, Fink, etc.), or there are unofficial native builds available from the Meld for OSX project.

Building

Meld uses meson build system. Use the following commands to build Meld from the source directory:

$ meson _build
$ cd _build
$ ninja

You can then install Meld system-wide by running:

$ ninja install

A Windows installer can be built with command

C:\Python34\python.exe setup_win32.py bdist_msi

which will create the file dist/Meld-VERSION-ARCH.msi.

Developing

It's easy to get started developing Meld. From a git checkout, just run bin/meld.

You'll need to have installed everything listed in the Requirements section above, and also GLib development tools (for glib-compile-resources).

We also support development using Flatpak via GNOME Builder. At the Builder "Clone..." dialog, enter https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/meld.git, and the default build + run development flow using Flatpak should work.

Contributing

Meld uses GNOME's GitLab to track bugs, and user questions and development discussions happen on the Meld mailing list. The development team is small, and new contributors are always welcome!