But Why?
I recently "had to" switch from PC to a Mac because of the lack of support from Microsoft for their collaboration software, I mean Office 365, Skype for Business and of course Microsoft Teams.
Now, while there are some "hacky" ways to workaround these "limitations" when having a daily driver that is a PC running Linux, the company policies do not allow for such things.
That is why I opted to replace my beloved PC with a Mac, I figured that the Unix DNA of Mac OS would ensure that enough of my Linux workflow would be able to survive the transition.
😥 Sigh 😥
What now ?
It's not that bad, I was able to reach my primary goal: run the required apps from Microsoft native and take advantage of the Mac Book Pros hardware, but I am now faced with a new problem: I have to find replacements for the software I got accustomed to on my Linux OS and environment.
The first, I think, good solution I found was a replacement for the awesome tool that is MELD because at the time of writing this, the Mac OS port is not yet finished and building from source is not something I want to do as a noob
So I am going to use the Community Edition of the IntelliJ IDE, it provides a lot of stuff I use daily, and am glad it offers a great diff tool that can handle files and folders.
Why I like it.
The coolest feature that Jet Brains builds into all its products is the OMNI-search or Global Search, this makes it easy to find stuff that is indexed and then select the candidates I want to compare:
tap SHIFT twice
type the filename
select file 1
repeat and select file 2
hit ⌘ + D once you have them
What else ?
Of course It is much more useful than just for melding stuff, here are the other things it brings out of the box (and also what it doesn't):
| Feature | Community Edition |
|---|---|
| License | Open-source, Apache 2.0 |
| Java, Kotlin, Groovy, Scala | ✔ |
| Android | ✔ |
| Maven, Gradle, SBT | ✔ |
| Git, SVN, Mercurial | ✔ |
| Perforce | ✘ |
| JavaScript, TypeScript | ✘ |
| Java EE, Spring, Play, Grails, Others ... | ✘ |
| Database Tools, SQL | ✘ |
| Detecting Duplicates | ✘ |
But this does not mean it is limited to these, the plugin system that powers the IDE is a treasure trove of useful stuff you can explore, stuff like:
. . .
Conclusion
This is a workaround I will, at some point, build MELD and add it to my toolbox. While I can get away with diff and diff3 on the terminal, I do like the assistance that I get in merging when using a GUI, and IntelliJ is simply not intended to be used as a command line tool.
Take care and compare,
Vio.
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