[windows] What's a good (free) visual merge tool for Git? (on windows)

A similar question was already asked, but for Ubuntu.

It would help to know if the tool is free as in beer or as in liber.

Also, up and downs of the tool would be nice to know.

Another free option is jmeld: http://keeskuip.home.xs4all.nl/jmeld/

It's a java tool and could therefore be used on several platforms.

But (as Preet mentioned in his answer), free is not always the best option. The best diff/merge tool I ever came across is Araxis Merge. Standard edition is available for 99 EUR which is not that much.

They also provide a documentation for how to integrate Araxis with msysGit.

If you want to stick to a free tool, JMeld comes pretty close to Araxis.

• TortoiseMerge (part of ToroiseSVN) is much better than kdiff3 (I use both and can compare);
• p4merge (from Perforce) works also very well;
• Diffuse isn't so bad;
• Diffmerge from SourceGear has only one flaw in handling UTF8-files without BOM, making in unusable for this case.

I've also used Meld. It's written in python. There is an official installer for Windows that works well.

Install it and then set it as your default mergetool.

$ git config --global merge.tool "meld"
$ git config --global mergetool.meld.path "C:\Program Files (x86)\Meld\Meld.exe"

If using a GUI GIT client, try the following (instructions for SourceTree, adjust accordingly)

• In SourceTree, go to Tools/Options/Diff
• In External Diff Tool, choose Custom
• Enter C:\Program Files (x86)\Meld\meld.exe in Diff Command and $LOCAL $REMOTE in Arguments
• In Merge Tool, choose Custom
• Enter C:\Program Files (x86)\Meld\meld.exe in Diff Command and $LOCAL $MERGED $REMOTE in Arguments

I don't know a good free tool but winmerge is ok(ish). I've been using the beyond compare tools since 1999 and can't rate it enough - it costs about 50 USD and this investment has paid for it self in time savings more than I can possible imagine.

Sometimes tools should be paid for if they are very very good.

What's wrong with using Git For Windows? From the repo view, there's an icon of the branch you're in (at the top), and if you click on manage you can drag&drop in a very visual and convenient way.

I've been using P4Merge, it's free and cross platform.