How To Install imediff on Debian 11

In this tutorial we learn how to install imediff on Debian 11. imediff is interactive full screen 2/3-way merge tool

Introduction

In this tutorial we learn how to install imediff on Debian 11.

What is imediff

imediff is:

The imediff command helps you to merge 2 slightly different files with an optional base file interactively using the in-place alternating display of the changed content on a single-pane full screen terminal user interface.

The source of line is clearly identified by the color of the line or the identifier character at the first column.

The advantage of this user interface is the minimal movement of the line of sight for the user. Other great tools such as vimdiff, xxdiff, meld and kdiff3 require you to look at different points of display to find the exact position of changes. This makes imediff the most stress-free tool.

Other great tools for merge such as “diff3 -m …” and “git merge …” operate only on the difference by line. So even for the non-overlapping changes, they yield the merge conflict if changes happen on the same line.

The automatic merge logic of the imediff command operates not only on the difference by line but on the difference by character. This is another great feature of the imediff command. So for the non-overlapping changes, it always yields the clean merge.

This comes with git-ime script which helps you to split squished git commit using imediff and with a support script to use imediff as the backend of git-mergetool.

There are three methods to install imediff on Debian 11. We can use apt-get, apt and aptitude. In the following sections we will describe each method. You can choose one of them.

Install imediff Using apt-get

Update apt database with apt-get using the following command.

sudo apt-get update

After updating apt database, We can install imediff using apt-get by running the following command:

sudo apt-get -y install imediff

Install imediff Using apt

Update apt database with apt using the following command.

sudo apt update

After updating apt database, We can install imediff using apt by running the following command:

sudo apt -y install imediff

Install imediff Using aptitude

If you want to follow this method, you might need to install aptitude first since aptitude is usually not installed by default on Debian. Update apt database with aptitude using the following command.

sudo aptitude update

After updating apt database, We can install imediff using aptitude by running the following command:

sudo aptitude -y install imediff

How To Uninstall imediff on Debian 11

To uninstall only the imediff package we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get remove imediff

Uninstall imediff And Its Dependencies

To uninstall imediff and its dependencies that are no longer needed by Debian 11, we can use the command below:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove imediff

Remove imediff Configurations and Data

To remove imediff configuration and data from Debian 11 we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y purge imediff

Remove imediff configuration, data, and all of its dependencies

We can use the following command to remove imediff configurations, data and all of its dependencies, we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove --purge imediff

Dependencies

imediff have the following dependencies:

References

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to install imediff package on Debian 11 using different package management tools: apt, apt-get and aptitude.