Using Git + TortoiseMerge, failing to load file into TortoiseMerge because of space in path name

Question

I'm trying to use Tortoise's DiffMerge tool to resolve a git merge conflict.

I've got the following my my .gitconfig:

[diff]
  tool = tortoisediff
[difftool]
  prompt = false
[merge]
  tool = tortoisemerge
[mergetool]
  prompt = false
  keepBackup = false
[difftool "tortoisediff"]
  cmd = \""c:/Program Files/TortoiseGIT/bin/TortoiseGitMerge.exe"\" -mine:"$REMOTE" -base:"$LOCAL"
[mergetool "tortoisemerge"]
  cmd = \""c:/Program Files/TortoiseGIT/bin/TortoiseGitMerge.exe"\" -base:"$BASE" -theirs:"$REMOTE" -mine:"$LOCAL" -merged:"$MERGED"

TortoiseGit opens fine, but when I try and work with my file I get an error:

The full path to the location looks like:

C:\Users\Streamus\Documents\GitHub\StreamusServer\Streamus.Tests\Controller Tests\ErrorControllerTest.cs

Is it possible to support this path using Git and TortoiseMerge? As far as I am aware I am properly escaping the path..

Answer 1

create a CMD file which will launch TortoiseMerge:

TortoiseMerge.exe -base:%1 -mine:%2 -theirs:%3 -merged:%4

And set up your mergetool in .gitconfig:

[merge]
    tool = mytool
[mergetool "mytool"]
    cmd = cmd /C tortoiseMerge-git.cmd "$BASE" "$LOCAL" "$REMOTE" "$MERGED"

The background:

Git internally uses a Windows version of sh. If it launches a command it will handle spaces in file names correctly. Arguments containing spaces are wrapped in quotes if necessary. But I haven't found a way to force having a literal quote halfway an argument.

TortoiseMerge expects arguments to look like this: -mine:"some path/some file.txt". If -mine is also enclosed in the quotes it won't work.

So we can create a batch file which just sticks the -mine: in front of the path, but there we encounter another bug: if you use a batch file as command, then the CMD file gets parsed by sh instead of cmd, so we explicitly invoke cmd with the /C switch to execute a command.

Note also that in the batch file, %1 etc. will have quotes around them, so don't add another set of quotes in the batch file.