View differences of branches with meld?

Question

I know that I can view the difference between HEAD and current state with meld .. But how can I view the differences between branches, for example master<

Answer 1

Starting with git v1.7.11, you can use git difftool --dir-diff to perform a directory diff. Which works quite well with meld wihout https://github.com/wmanley/git-meld scripts.

Configure git

git config --global diff.tool meld

Use it

git difftool -d topic             // -d is --dir-diff
git difftool -d master..topic

For macOS

brew cask install meld
git config --global difftool.meld.cmd 'open -W -a Meld --args \"$LOCAL\" \"$PWD/$REMOTE\"'
git config --global difftool.meld.trustExitCode true

Answer 2

I think a easy way for doing this is using git reset --soft:

Goal: compare differences between branch_a and branch_b with meld

git checkout branch_a
git checkout -b do_diff
git reset --soft branch_b
meld .