xcleardiff is a graphical diff and merge utility for text files. It implements the xcompare and xmerge methods for the text_file and compressed_text_file type managers, as well as the graphical portions of these methods for the directory and _html type managers. On color display monitors, xcleardiff uses different colors to highlight changes, insertions, and deletions from one or more contributing files. During merge operations, contributors are processed incrementally and, when necessary, interactively, to visibly construct a merge results file. You can edit this file directly in the merge results pane as it is being built to add, delete, or change code manually, or to add comments.
xcleardiff is implemented as an X Window System application using a standard Motif toolkit. For a description of general mouse and keyboard conventions, see your X Window System documentation .
You can invoke xcleardiff directly from the command line, specifying files or versions to compare or merge. Invoking xcleardiff directly bypasses the type managers, so invoke xcleardiff directly only when you are working with text files that are not stored in a VOB.
The following cleartool subcommands, when applied to text files, also invoke xcleardiff:
The findmerge command includes the advantage of some extra command options—optional preprocessing—in the same way that diff and merge offer more flexibility than direct calls to the character-based cleardiff utility. See findmerge –ftag, for example.
Various buttons and commands in the xclearcase graphical interface also invoke xcleardiff.
If you specify a base contributor with –base, xcleardiff performs the merge automatically, prompting only if two or more contributors modify the same section of the base contributor. If all changes can be merged automatically, xcleardiff prompts you before saving the merge results file.
–qall turns off automatic acceptance of changes in which only one contributor differs from the base file. In this mode, xcleardiff prompts you to accept or reject each modification (relative to the base file) in each contributor, as it does when two or more contributors differ from the base contributor. You can switch this mode interactively during the xcleardiff session.
–abort is intended for use with scripts or batch jobs that involve merges. It allows completely automatic merges to proceed, but aborts any merge that would require user interaction.