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I just updated to 10.7.3 and can no longer find the FileMerge application, which is part of the Xcode developer tools package. Did apple remove this in 10.7.3?

I've checked in my developer directory, and used Spotlight, but it is nowhere to be found.

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It's still there for me. /Developer/Applications/Utilities/FileMerge.app – ughoavgfhw Feb 17 '12 at 16:14
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You can access it via the command line with opendiff. – lhf May 15 '12 at 9:53

2 Answers

up vote 19 down vote accepted

With Xcode 4.3, Apple has moved the content of /Developer to the usual places for applications etc. Filemerge is accessible by starting Xcode and then accessing Xcode -> Open Developer Tool. If it's not listed there, select "More Developer Tools" to install it.

Physically it's part of Xcode.app (Xcode.app/Contents/Applications/FileMerge.app) and can be executed stand-alone by inspecting the package content of Xcode.app. If you really need it outside of Xcode often, you can also create an alias/symlink to start it directly (or just drag it into the Dock).

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FYI Spotlight indexes aliases so create an alias and drop it in ~/Applications folder to have it show up in Spotlight. – Steve Moser Mar 22 '12 at 17:12
I found that an alias to FileMerge.app would give me the error "Item is used by Mac OS X and can't be opened" when opening from Spotlight, and a symlink didn't show up in Spotlight. Not sure if there's a solution. – Andrew Vit Apr 23 '12 at 17:41
Copying the app to the Applications folder yields an error as well - apparently the app needs to run in its own native folder. But @Till's AppleScript approach works great! Open the AppleScript editor, paste in his line, "Save as..." an app in the Applications folder - and enjoy FileMerge! Thanks @Till! – Traveling Tech Guy Jan 3 at 21:01
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You can save an AppleScript as application to launch FileMerge inside Xcode:

tell application "/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Applications/FileMerge.app" to activate
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Good job! Completely forgot about AppleScript. – Traveling Tech Guy Jan 3 at 21:01

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