Xfce Forum

Endre

Member

Registered: 2013-07-07

Posts: 4

Meld custom action in Thunar

Hi,

I have configured this custom action: meld %F
Unfortunately it doesn't handle selections from multiple tabs. Without this it is almost useless. The compared files or directories must have the same parent directory.
Is there any way to configure Meld action which considers selections from multiple Thunar tabs?

hjudt

Member

Registered: 2014-11-27

Posts: 21

Re: Meld custom action in Thunar

No, there are no "selections from multiple tabs". You have to figure out a different workflow.

Endre

Member

Registered: 2013-07-07

Posts: 4

Re: Meld custom action in Thunar

And would it be difficult to add it to Thunar?  The custom action's command parameter could have a prefix for it.
E.g.:
%F The paths to all selected files
%mF The paths to all selected files from all tabs

hjudt

Member

Registered: 2014-11-27

Posts: 21

Re: Meld custom action in Thunar

Yes, it would be difficult. You can try and provide a patch.

Carlo

Member

Registered: 2020-05-01

Posts: 1

Re: Meld custom action in Thunar

Hi all,

I don't know if this is a complete solution for Endre request, anyway...

I was searching for a way to select two file or two folders located in different paths and send them to meld for comparison. The idea is to have something similar to the two-step selection available with WinMerge on Windows. With Explorer you can select the first file or folder, right-click on it and choose "Compare To" in menu (see screenshot step1) then navigate to the second file or folder, again right-click on it and choose "Compare" (step2). WinMerge will run and compare the two items.

step1

step2

I have been able to setup something similar on Thunar creating two custom actions:

• Meld: select first

• Meld: select second and compare

The first custom action should only "store" somewhere the full path and name of the file or folder selected, the second should recover that info and use it as the first parameter for meld, followed by the second item selected in Thunar.
So, what command allows me to implement the first action? It's explained in https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Thuna … rrent_Path, where the xclip command is used.

So first of all install it: open a term and type:

sudo apt-get install xclip

then you can create the two custom action in Thunar: for the first I choose the Name "Meld: select first", you can type what you prefer. The command is:

echo -n %f | xclip

For the second custom action I set the name "Meld: select second and compare" and the command:

xclip -o | xargs -r -I '{}' meld '{}' %f

For both, on the "Appearance Conditions" tab I set

• File pattern: *

• Appears if selection contains: Directories, Text files, Other files

Hope this can help someone.