Installing Meld on Mac OS using macports

After playing around with various merge tools on Mac, I have come to the conclusion that none match the ease of use that Meld offers. Here is how I managed to install it on my Mac OS X 10.8.5.

1. First install macports
2. If you are running Mac OS 10.8 and greater, you will need to install xquartz which provides the X Window system required for Meld. If you have Mac OS prior to 10.8 you can skip this step.
3. Install Meld and its dependencies:
   

   sudo port install rarian
   sudo port install meld
   

4. Set your locale (I hard coded this so I do not have to export it each time) by updating the /opt/local/bin/meld script by changing line 75 from:

   locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL,'')

   to

   locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL,'en_US')

5. Start the service at boot

   launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchAgents/org.freedesktop.dbus-session.plist

6. Finally run meld using spotlight or via the command line: /opt/local/bin/meld

 

Notes: 

If you try to run Meld without having xquartz installed then you will get the following error:

(process:65163): Gtk-WARNING **: Locale not supported by C library.
 Using the fallback 'C' locale.
/opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages/gtk-2.0/gtk/__init__.py:57: GtkWarning: could not open display
  warnings.warn(str(e), _gtk.Warning)
/opt/local/bin/meld:126: GtkWarning: GtkIconTheme *gtk_icon_theme_get_for_screen(GdkScreen *): assertion 'GDK_IS_SCREEN (screen)' failed
  gtk.icon_theme_get_default().append_search_path(meld.paths.icon_dir())
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/opt/local/bin/meld", line 126, in 
    gtk.icon_theme_get_default().append_search_path(meld.paths.icon_dir())
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'append_search_path'
logout 

Reference:

http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201341

http://thebugfreeblog.blogspot.com/2014/03/installing-meld-on-mac-os-x.html