"Batteries Included" windows installer

[Steve Borho]

On Tuesday 28 August 2007, Bela Babik wrote:
> > tcltk executable for hgk, and merge scripts which use TortoiseSVN tools
> > (sold separately) to perform merge and other misc functions.  It's
>
> My personal option is that TortoiseSVNs merge tools are useless.
> For merge I recommend winmerge or kdiff3, for file diffs csdiff is really
> cool.
> A related discussion:
> http://programming.reddit.com/info/1je83/comments

I have used kdiff3 myself for quite some time, but it lost out in my 
semi-formal competition for the default win32 install  (obviously there's 
nothing to prevent a user from switching diff/merge tools after the fact):

* Many new mercurial users are coming from, or already working with SVN, so 
they are likely to already have TortoiseSVN installed (and a familiarity with 
it's tools).

* TortoiseSVN also provides a ssh client, reducing the required app count to 2
(csdiff and kdiff3 both require separate installs)

* Kdiff3 has a very busy interface, and I think it can confound new users.

* I tried to use csdiff but I couldn't figure out how to make it do a three 
way merge or the "change selection" feature that qct needs.  TortoiseMerge 
can perform both tasks, if a bit clumsily.

I have to admit I haven't used TortoiseMerge for very long myself, what do you 
think is deficient about it?

PS: thanks for the link, I ran across that page a while ago and then couldn't 
find it again when I went looking for it.

PS2:  Now that I think about it, it would be fantastic if someone ported Meld 
to windows.  It's python based, has a very simple UI, and even has a 
mercurial back-end.

-- 
Steve Borho (steve at borho.org)
http://www.borho.org/~steve/steve.asc
Key fingerprint = 2D08 E7CF B624 624C DE1F  E2E4 B0C2 5292 F2C6 2C8C