README

KDiff3-Readme
=============

Author: Joachim Eibl  (joachim.eibl at gmx.de)
Port to KF5/Qt5 by Michael Reeves (reeves.87@gmail.com)
KDiff3-Version: 1.12

Now requires Qt 5.12 or later and KF5 5.70+. Legacy 0.9.98 and earlier builds are not supported.
MacOS X build is 64-bit only unfortunately I can't test build locally. The Konqueror specific plug-in
is not ported and no longer maintained. This plug-in would only apply to KDE before 4.6. As of 1/13/17
cmake 3.1+ is the targeted cmake version.

cmake is now the only build system supported. KF5/Qt5 was big jump. A lot changed besides just the API.
I am not against a Qt5-only build variant but see no reason to maintain two separate build systems.
At present KF5 is my focus.

Known Issues:
*Binary comparison has been temporarily disabled due to stability issues.
*Network comparison operation via non file urls may fail for some configurations. This is under investigation.

The current repository is at https://invent.kde.org/sdk/kdiff3

Binaries can be downloaded at https://download.kde.org/stable/kdiff3/?C=M;O=D

Bugs can be reported at https://bugs.kde.org

The original pre KF5/Qt5 Readme follows old build instructions have been removed to avoid confusion:


Copyright: (C) 2002-2014 by Joachim Eibl

KDiff3 runs best on KDE but can be built without it, depending only on Qt-libs.
These are available for Un*x, Windows, Mac.
Thus there are many setup possibilities to consider.

Supported Qt-versions: 4.8, 5.2 or higher.
Supported KDE-version: 4, 5
(For KDE3/Qt3 use KDiff3-0.9.92 or older.)

Contents
--------

- Introduction
- License
- Additional hints


Introduction
------------

KDiff3 is a program that
- compares and merges two or three input files or directories,
- shows the differences line by line and character by character (!),
- provides an automatic merge-facility and
- an integrated editor for comfortable solving of merge-conflicts
- has support for KDE-KIO (ftp, sftp, http, fish, smb),
- has an intuitive graphical user interface,
- provides a context menu for KDE-Dolphin and Windows-Explorer,
- supports 64 bit systems. (Some build issues are discussed in here.)
- Support for many encodings and Unicode.

Do you want help translating? Read the instructions on https://l10n.kde.org/ !


License
-------

    GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE, Version 2, June 1991
    This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
    it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
    the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
    (at your option) any later version.

    This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
    but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
    GNU General Public License for more details.

    You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
    along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
    Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02111-1307
    USA

    For details see file "COPYING".


------------------------------------------------------------------------

Additional hints
----------------

   Start from commandline:
   - Comparing 2 files:     kdiff3 file1 file2
   - Merging 2 files:       kdiff3 file1 file2 -o outputfile
   - Comparing 3 files:     kdiff3 file1 file2 file3
   - Merging 3 files:       kdiff3 file1 file2 file3 -o outputfile
        Note that file1 will be treated as base of file2 and file3.

   If all files have the same name but are in different directories, you can
   reduce typework by specifying the filename only for the first file. E.g.:
   - Comparing 3 files:     kdiff3 dir1/filename dir2 dir3
   (This also works in the open-dialog.)

   If you start without arguments, then a dialog will appear where you can
   select your files via a filebrowser.

   For more documentation, see the help-menu or the subdirectory doc.

   Have fun!