Open this tool from the command line

[luiszugasti]

Hi there, I've been researching command line tools to replace my kdiff3 usage. I use SVN and in my org we do three way merging very often.

In SVN, we call kdiff3 with three files - %base, %mine, and %theirs. We also call it with %merged (as an out parameter).

I'd love to be able to use vscode for diffing files, as I get syntax highlighting and error checking that I severely lack with kdiff3. If there is a way to do this, that would be much appreciated. I am also open to contributing to the project if this is possible but not implemented yet.

[zawys]

Hello! Thanks for your interest in this project.

I also wanted to have such feature. Approaches coming to my mind:

1. Change VS Code's CLI such that you can pass the file paths to diff via command line arguments. This requires some change in VS Code's API. I created an (accepted) feature request: [cli] specify command that runs on window open. I suppose that this feature is not very high on the VS Code team's agenda, but probably they will accept a pull request.
2. Pass the information which files to diff using a temporary file. Maybe it works to create a temporary file with a special file ending on which the extension could react when it is opened in VS Code. However, this smells like it would break often, considering VS Codes recent feature of restricted workspaces and seems to be awkward for the user (ok, the extension could maybe provide a binary which creates that temporary file appropriately for the user). Also I don't like to open editors just to close them afterwards – but maybe even there there's a way around it.
3. Have the extension provide a separate binary which launches VS Code (on demand) and communicates to the extension on some way (socket, pipes, monitored directory). Sounds doable, but probably requires much testing to be reliable on all 3 major OSes.

So I would prefer solution 1, but I would also be happy when one of the other two ways would be implemented properly.

[luiszugasti]

@zawys so sorry to reply late. I am looking into this. I agree with the strategy in solution 1, I might not get to it in a while, but it is something I would really like. Will keep discussing in the near future.