Integrate with other macOS applications

VisualDiffer allows you to:

• view text files on external editors like BBEdit or SublimeText
• compare files on external comparators like Kaleidoscope or the beloved BBEdit

The integration requires some shell scripts; they allow the editor caret to move to specific lines or open new buffers in an existing application instance.

Text Editors

Files can be opened using your preferred text editor. Select Open With from the context menu to select the destination application.
In addition you can configure the preferred editor from the Preference panel; the selected application will be shown at the top of the Open With menu.

Open editor at specific line

From the Files Diff window it’s possible to pass the selected line number to the application so the cursor will move to it.
It’s necessary to create a Unix script and place it inside the directory

/Users/<<username>>/Library/Application Scripts/com.visualdiffer/editors

The script must have a very specific file name ending with .sh.
The file name is the so-called App Bundle Identifier and can be found by executing from Terminal.app the following command (the example uses Sublime Text)

osascript -e 'id of app "/Applications/Sublime Text.app"'

that returns com.sublimetext.3 so the file name will be

com.sublimetext.3.sh

Some examples are available at the externalapp-integration repository.

You can install all integration scripts by running the command shown below:

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/visualdiffer/externalapp-integration/HEAD/install.sh)"

Warning The script must have the execute flag set otherwise it will not be called (i.e. chmod +x script).
The Console.app could contain error messages.