View Local SVN Diff in TextMate

I created the simplest of little bash functions that I use just about everyday. All it does is:

  1. Save the output of the SVN diff command of the current directory in a temp file.
  2. Open that temp file in TextMate, which does beautiful color coding of the diff for easy review before I check in.1

That’s it.

It’s very easy to set up. Edit your .profile file to add the following line:

diffit () { svn diff > ~/Desktop/temp.diff; open -a TextMate ~/Desktop/temp.diff; }

Now open a new terminal window, navigate to an SVN checkout directory that has local changes, and type ‘diffit’ – the command you just defined. You should see the SVN diff results in TextMate, and saved in a temp.diff file on your desktop.

  1. Now that I think about it, I need to take the time to get Araxis Merge set up to see how it handles .diff files. Also how well its SVN tools work. [back]

This post is part of the thread: Version Control – an ongoing story on this site. View the thread timeline for more context on this post.