using araxis merge for folder comparison on git branches (OSX)

Question

I know how to setup araxis merge to be my git diff / merge tool, so if I do git difftool it automatically launches araxis merge.

However if I do git difftool upstream/master (to see all the differences between current branch and upstream/master), it launches the app one by one for every single file that is different. Is there a way of setting it up so I can get a folder comparison type view, and then go down and view each file diff as I choose? i.e. similar to this http://www.araxis.com/merge_mac/overview2.html

The only way I've found to do this is to clone my repo into a new folder, switch to the branch there, and then do a normal araxis merge folder comparison.

Answer 1

I don't know if this is still interesting for you but recent versions of Araxis provide direct access to Git repos:

http://www.araxis.com/merge/topic_plugin_git.html

So, if you want to launch Araxis to compare your master to origin/master, you shall be able to do it using

git log -1 origin/master

to obtain the latest commit in origin/master (say 123456ab. Then, open Araxis and use your working copy folder as one side of the comparison (/path/to/repo). The other side shall be set to

git:///path/to/repo#123456ab

Then, Araxis will compare your WC to origin/master.

Answer 2

This isn't a particularly satisfying answer, but the only way I've found is to have difftool copy the files into a temp location before doing the diff:

git difftool -d master

This will allow you to open any file for diffing in one root editor. It won't work for copying deltas back into your original local files however. Better than nothing though and easy to do from the command line.