tests/README

extdiff: allow a preconfigured merge-tool to be invoked

There are three ways to configure an extdiff tool:

    1) cmd.tool = (/path/to/exe optional)
    2) tool = (path/to/exe optional)
    3) tool = sometool someargs

Previously, if no executable is specified in the first two forms, the named tool
must be in $PATH, or the invocation fails.  Since the [merge-tools] section
already has the path to the diff executable, and/or the registry keys to find
the executable on Windows, reuse that configuration for forms 1 and 2 instead of
failing.  We already fallback to [diff-tools] and then [merge-tools] for program
arguments if they aren't specified in the [extdiff] section.

Since this additional lookup only occurs if an executable is not on the $PATH
for the named tool, this is backwards compatible.  For now, we assume the user
knows what he is doing if a path is provided.

This change allows a configuration file like this (assuming beyondcompare3 is
configured in merge-tools), instead of hardcoding system specific a path:

    [extdiff]
    beyondcompare3 =

To run the tests, do:

cd tests/
python run-tests.py

See http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/WritingTests for
more information on writing tests.