SourceTree "diff against current" behavior

[Peter Lindquist]

I'm using SourceTree 1.5.6.

• I have the master branch checked out
• I right-click a remote feature branch and choose "Diff against current"
• SourceTree thinks for a while, but doesn't change the ui

What is the expected behavior? I was expecting a changeset of my local master branch versus the remote branch. Ultimately I'd like to open that diff externally.. using FileMerge.

Additional info:

• SourceTree successfully opens FileMerge when I use "External Diff" on a specific file in the Log View.
• I can use opendiff from the command line without errors
• Xcode 4.6.2
• Mountain Lion (10.8.3)

If I'm going about this the wrong way, is there a better way to diff a feature branch against master?

[KieranA · Accepted solution]

Hi Peter,

Just as a quick note to start, if you're using the App Store (as I notice you're using 1.5.6) then we no longer publish to the App Store. You can get SourceTree direct from http://www.sourcetreeapp.com/

As for your problem, "Diff against current" basically selects two points in the log view to show the difference between those two branches. Here's a quick example I took:

I said "Diff against current" from master, and current is develop. So it just selects the head commit between the two branches, rather than giving you a diff between two different points. If you want to see the changes between revisions of a file you can use "Blame selected" option when command clicking on a file, and you can see the entire history in a log view of a particular file by right clicking and hitting "Log selected".

Hope that helps, if not, feel free to ask more questions

[Peter Lindquist]

Kieran-- thank you much for the quick response.

I switched to 1.6.0. All other factors remain the same.

It turns out that it wasn't (just) me-- version 1.5.6 didn't show a diff, but 1.6.0 behaves like you describe. Specifically it seems to execute the equivilent of:

git difftool master origin/<feature-branch>

[AlecRust]

I have the same problem, running 1.9.2.

[Peter Lindquist]

Upgrading to 1.6.0 solved the problem. Specifically it seems to execute the equivilent of:

git difftool master origin/<feature-branch>

A perfectly reasonable thing to do.