using vim for diffs with svn

Question

I'd like to make it so that when I type in svn diff it uses vim to view the diffs. I asked about this at https://stackoverflow.com/q/25558639/569976 I was referred to Change default SVN diffing tool . Per that I tried svn diff -dif-cmd vim but that gives me this error:

Index: path/to/file.ext
===================================================================
4 files to edit
E282: Cannot read from "-L"
Press ENTER or type command to continue

Any ideas?

Possible duplicate of [How to view svn diff in vimdiff style in svn](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7866286/how-to-view-svn-diff-in-vimdiff-style-in-svn) — agold, Mar 04 '16 at 11:33

score 3 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 10:29

The same error occurred to me, and this was because I put vimdiff directly in the subversion configuration (~/.subversion/config) at the field diff-cmd. It seems that the files to check are not past as first and second parameter, therefore you have to write a wrapper script:

#!/bin/sh
/usr/bin/vimdiff ${6} ${7}

And then put this in the subversion configuration file:

diff-cmd = /path/../vimwrapperscript.sh

You should make it executable (chmod +x), and you cannot use ~ in the configuration file to refer to your home, you should use the full path.

using vim for diffs with svn

2 Answers2