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MELD(1) General Commands Manual MELD(1)

meld - Visual diff and merge tool for the GNOME Desktop

meld [options]
meld [options] FILE1
meld [options] DIR1
meld [options] FILE1 FILE2 [FILE3]
meld [options] DIR1 DIR2 [DIR3]

Meld is a graphical diff viewer and merge application for the GNOME desktop. It supports 2 and 3-file diffs, recursive directory diffs, diffing of directories under version control (Bazaar, CVS, Darcs, Fossil, Git, Mercurial, Monotone), as well as the ability to manually and automatically merge file differences.


Automatically compare all differing files on startup.

Automatically merge files

Load a saved comparison from a Meld comparison file

Create a diff tab for the given files or directories. Note that "meld --diff FILE1 FILE2" is functionally equivalent to "meld FILE1 FILE2". However, the --diff argument can be given multiple times for one invocation of meld which allows the user to automatically initiate multiple diffs when meld starts. See examples below.

Print application help and usage.

Set application window title to <label>.

Open the comparison as a new tab in an already-running instance.

Sets the save path for the middle buffer in a three-pane merge view. This is useful for loading the middle buffer from one file and saving it to another, for example in use as a version control merge helper.

Ignored for compatibility

Print application version and exit.


Run meld without initiating a diff.

Initiate a diff between FILE1 and the version-controlled copy of FILE1.

Initiate a recursive diff between DIR1 and the version-controlled copy of DIR1.

Initiate a diff between FILE1 and FILE2.

Initiate a 3-way diff between FILE1, FILE2, and FILE3.

Initiate a recursive diff between directory DIR1 and DIR2.

Initiate a recursive 3-way diff between directory DIR1, DIR2, and DIR3.

Initiate a diff between FILE1 and FILE2, and a separate diff between FILE3 and FILE4.

If you find a bug, please report it at https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/meld/issues or mail a description of the issue to meld-list@gnome.org.

See the AUTHORS text file in meld's source code (http://git.gnome.org/browse/meld/tree/AUTHORS).

26 Sept 2010