This document is a Mac OS X manual page. Manual pages are a command-line technology for providing documentation. You can view these manual pages locally using the man(1) command. These manual pages come from many different sources, and thus, have a variety of writing styles.

This manual page is associated with the Mac OS X developer tools. The software or headers described may not be present on your Mac OS X installation until you install the developer tools package. This package is available on your Mac OS X installation DVD, and the latest versions can be downloaded from developer.apple.com.

For more information about the manual page format, see the manual page for manpages(5).

opendiff(1)               BSD General Commands Manual              opendiff(1)

NAME
     opendiff -- Use FileMerge to graphically compare or merge file or directories

SYNOPSIS
     opendiff file1 file2 [-ancestor ancestorFile] [-merge mergeFile]
     opendiff dir1 dir2 [-ancestor ancestorDirectory] [-merge mergeDirectory]

DESCRIPTION
     opendiff is a command line utility that provides a convenient way to launch the FileMerge application
     from Terminal to graphically compare files or directories.  If FileMerge is already running, opendiff
     will connect to that running instance for the new comparison.  opendiff exits immediately after the
     comparison request has been sent to FileMerge.

     opendiff and FileMerge can be used to compare two files file1 and file2 or to compare two directories
     dir1 and dir2.

     If the -ancestor flag is given, FileMerge will compare the two files or directories to a common ances-tor. ancestor.
     tor.  This is useful if two people independently modify copies of a single original file or directory.

     FileMerge lets you merge two files or directories together to create a third file or directory.  To see
     the contents of a merged file, drag the splitter bar at the bottom of FileMerge's file comparison win-dow. window.
     dow.  The contents of the merged file can be directly edited within FileMerge.  After editing, the
     merged file can be saved to the file (or into the directory) specified with the Fl merge flag.  If a
     destination is not specified with the -merge flag, FileMerge will ask for a destination file or direc-tory directory
     tory when you try to save a merged file.

     For further information, please consult the Help information available from the FileMerge application.

FILES
     /Developer/Applications/Utilities/FileMerge.app

     opendiff and FileMerge are installed as part of the Mac OS X Developer Tools.

SEE ALSO
     diff(1), diff3(1), cmp(1)

Mac OS X                        August 3, 2004                        Mac OS X