PhpStorm 2016.1 Help

Running PhpStorm as a Diff or Merge Command Line Tool

In this topic:

Overview

Besides using PhpStorm as an Integrated Development Environment, you can use it as a command line tool for comparing and merging files.

PhpStorm executable is platform-dependent:

  • Windows: WebIde XX\bin\phpstorm.exe or WebIde XX\bin\phpstorm.bat
  • UNIX: WebIde XX/bin/phpstorm.sh
  • OS X: /Applications/WebIde XX.app/Contents/MacOS/phpstorm

    To add the launcher to your path, add its containing directory /Applications/PhpStorm.app/Contents/MacOS.

However, for OS X and UNIX, one should create a wrapper script, since this helps avoid some drawbacks related to the usage of PhpStorm launcher.

Enabling invocation of PhpStorm operations from the command line

For OS X and UNIX platforms, we recommend creating the wrapper script, or the command line launcher to integrate PhpStorm with your shell. Then, you need to ensure that the created launcher script is within the search path of your shell.

On Windows, we recommend to add the path to PhpStorm to the environment variable Path. Everything is done outside of PhpStorm, with the PhpStorm executable.

Note that if you have specified location of the PhpStorm executable as a Path environment variable, the command will work no matter which directory you are currently in.

To enable invoking PhpStorm operations from the command line, follow these steps

  • On OS X or UNIX:
    1. Make sure PhpStorm is running.
    2. On the main menu, choose Tools | Create Command-line Launcher. The dialog box Create Launcher Script opens, with the suggested path and name of the launcher script. You can accept default, or specify your own path.

      Make notice of it, as you'll need it later.

    3. Outside of PhpStorm, add the path and name of the launcher script to your path.
  • On Windows:
    • Specify the location of the PhpStorm executable in the Path system environment variable. In this case, you will be able to invoke the PhpStorm executable and other PhpStorm commands from any directory.

Comparing files using PhpStorm as a command line tool

To compare two files using PhpStorm as a diff command line tool

  1. Enable invoking PhpStorm operations from the command line.
  2. Type the following command at the command line prompt:
    <PhpStorm launcher(Windows) or wrapper script (MacOS or UNIX)> diff <path to file1> <path to file2>
    where file1 is your local copy, file2 is the repository version.

For example:

phpstorm diff README.md.bak README.md

Merging files using PhpStorm as a command line tool

Most often you need to merge three versions of the same file: your local version, the version in the repository or in the upstream, and the base revision, which is the origin for the two diverged versions.

To merge files using PhpStorm as a command line tool

  1. Enable invoking PhpStorm operations from the command line.
  2. Type the following command at the command line prompt:
    <PhpStorm launcher(Windows) or wrapper script (MacOS or UNIX)> merge <path to file1> <path to file2> <path to file3> <path to output>
    where file1 is your local copy, file2 is the repository version, file3 is the base revision for file1 and file2, and output is the file to save the merge results in (optional).

Passing three arguments to merge tool

It is possible to pass just three arguments to the merge tool:

<path to file1> <path to file2> <path to output>.

In this case, the contents of the output will be taken as the base revision:

<PhpStorm launcher> merge <path to file1> <path to file2> <path to output> <path to output>

See the example in this blog to learn how to use PhpStorm diff and merge tool with Git.

See Also

Last modified: 12 July 2016