desktop: Allow Beyond Compare For Merge Conflicts

The desktop app doesn’t work with Beyond Compare for merge conflicts

I have the following settings in my gitconfig file.

[merge]
  tool = BeyondCompare4
[diff]
  guitool = beyondcompare4
[difftool "beyondcompare4"]
  path = C:/Program Files/Beyond Compare 4/bcomp.exe
  cmd = \"C:/Program Files/Beyond Compare 4/bcomp.exe\" \"$LOCAL\" \"$REMOTE\"
[mergetool "BeyondCompare4"]
  path = C:/Program Files/Beyond Compare 4/bcomp.exe
  cmd = \"C:/Program Files/Beyond Compare 4/bcomp.exe\" \"$LOCAL\" \"$REMOTE\" \"$BASE\" \"$MERGED\"

These settings allow Beyond Compare as a merge tool in other Git clients.

When I need to resolve merge conflicts in the desktop application, it opens VS Code. This is set under options -> integrations -> applications and does not allow for Beyond Compare or other 3rd party tools for merging.

Proposed solution

Allow for Beyond Compare and other 3rd party applications to be used for merge conflicts. I have to use a different source control tool when I have merge conflicts.

About this issue

Original URL
State: open
Created 4 years ago
Reactions: 23
Comments: 15 (5 by maintainers)

Most upvoted comments

Why not just support whatever merge tool the user already has configured in .gitconfig? A simple option to run the “git mergetool” command would fix this.

owenwp on Apr 22, 2021

I know it’s not a real solution, just a workaround. Posting it here because it may help someone.

You need to install TortoiseGit and configure it to use Beyond Compare, or whatever other diff/merge tool you want to use.

Whenever you use GitHub Desktop to do the merge and get conflicts, you get this popup saying that there is a conflict and can resolve each file in VS Code.

Don’t close it, just ALT+TAB to File Explorer
Right-click on your repo and select TortoiseGit > Resolve
It will show you a list of the files that have conflicts, you can double-click on each of them and do your stuff (obviously if you configured TortoiseGit to use Beyond Compare, it will open in Beyond Compare)
After you resolve everything you can ALT+TAB and go back to GitHub Desktop, it will detect that conflicts have been resolved and will let you continue

Not perfect, but it works.

jan-oratowski on Jan 25, 2023

I think I’d be interested in looking at something for this. I can draft something up, create a PR, and see what the thoughts are.

ADustyOldMuffin on Jul 1, 2021

I would second this and also suggest TortoiseGit as another editor. https://tortoisegit.org/

anarten on Apr 23, 2020