Truth be told, I find default Ediff to be weird and intimidating compared to other tools that do the same thing, which is to find differences between two files. Like other modes, Ediff is reliant on the user knowing beforehand its commands and respective keybindings, which means it has a steep learning curve. Many of these commands are context specific. While Ediff tries to be helpful by displaying a cheat sheet, I find this feature to be so information dense and context-free (in a bad way) that it usually results in upping my anxiety. I mean, look at this table!

That said, I’m not here to bury Ediff, but to praise it. Ediff is embarrassingly rich in functionality and time-tested. It just needs a better UI, which brings us to today’s post topic: Announcing Casual support for Ediff.

The approach Casual takes is to provide a Transient menu for the Ediff control panel, which is configured to be in the same frame as the windows holding the compared files. This menu organizes relevant commands in sections that map to the files being compared and does its best to be context-sensitive (e.g. determine if the buffer is writable or read-only, know if its a file comparision or a merge, etc.).

The result is an interface that is calmer to my eyes, as shown below.

Casual Ediff builds on the work described in my earlier blog post Using Ediff in 2023, in providing a streamlined way to diff a modified version-controlled file. This way, if you already have the file loaded in a window, you can call casual-ediff-revision to immediately see what changes you’ve made to it and to selectively be able to revert each change.

Casual Ediff also lets you resolve merge conflicts (typically from Magit). Added to Ediff is the ability to merge both conflicting differences in the order of choice by the user (the menu items “Merge A,B to C”, “Merge B,A to C”).

Read more about Casual Ediff at Ediff (Casual User Guide).

Casual Ediff is now available on MELPA as part of the v2.10.0 update for Casual.

It costs money to make, enhance, and maintain Casual as ideologically free software. If you enjoy using Casual, please consider a financial contribution to help support its development and maintenance. Thanks!

emacs