<info> <name>Kai Willadsen</name> <email>kai.willadsen@gmail.com</email> <years>2012</years> </info> Getting started comparing folders

<app>Meld</app> lets you compare two or three folders side-by-side. You can start a new folder comparison using the new comparison button on the toolbar, and clicking on the Directory Comparison tab.

Your selected folders will be shown as side-by-side trees, with differences between files in each folder highlighted. You can copy or delete files from either folder, or compare individual text files in more detail.

The folder comparison view

The main parts of a folder comparison are the trees showing the folders you're comparing. You can easily move around these comparisons to find changes that you're interested in. When you select a file or folder, more detailed information is given in the status bar at the bottom of the window. Pressing <key>Enter</key> on a selected file, or double-clicking any file in the tree will open a side-by-side file comparison of the files in a new tab, but this will only work properly if they're text files!

There are bars on the right-hand side of the window that show you a simple colored summary of the comparison results. Each file or folder in the comparison corresponds to a small section of these bars, though <app>Meld</app> doesn't show Same files so that it's easier to see any actually important differences. You can click anywhere on this bar to jump straight to that place in the comparison.

Navigating folder comparisons

You can jump between changed files (that is, any files/folders that are not classified as being identical) with the previous and next change buttons in the toolbar.

You can use the <key>Left</key> and <key>Right</key> arrow keys to move between the folders you're comparing. This is useful so that you can select an individual file for copying or deletion.

States in folder comparisons

Each file or folder in a tree has its own state, telling you how it differed from its corresponding files/folders. The possible states are:

<comment> Kai

The following table would be much more effective if we could style entries in the Appearance column to show what they would actually look like.

Ideally we would pull these colors and other details from the theme/gtkrc, but even an illustration of the default would help a lot.

</comment>

Folder comparison states

State | Appearance | Meaning
Same | Normal font | The file/folder is the same across all compared folders.
Same when filtered | Italics | These files are different across folders, but once text filters are applied, these files become identical.
Modified | Blue and bold | These files differ between the folders being compared.
New | Green and bold | This file/folder exists in this folder, but not in the others.
Missing | Grayed out text with a line through the middle | This file/folder doesn't exist in this folder, but does in one of the others.
Error | Bright red with a yellow background and bold | When comparing this file, an error occurred. The most common error causes are file permissions (i.e., <app>Meld</app> was not allowed to open the file) and filename encoding errors.

You can filter out files based on these states, for example, to show only files that have been Modified. You can read more about this in .

The icons in some rows have emblems added to them to show additional information. Note that these icons may change depending on your icon theme, so these descriptions are only a guide.

Additional emblems

Emblem | Appearance | Meaning
New | Small blue dot | Used to indicate the "newest" (i.e., most recently modified) file in the row
Symbolic link | Arrow | Shows that the row item is a symbolic link
Selected | Tick mark | Shows that a file has been selected for a marked comparison, used to compare differently named files across folders