"The left and right path can't be compared!"

[vadimcn]

I've found your extension useful on many occasions! However, this one time I'm trying to compare two folders (one of them on a mounted filesystem—could that be the reason?), and the extension errors out with the message: "The left and right path can't be compared!" without any explanation as to why.
It would be great if more information about the errors could be provided to help figure out what's wrong. Thanks!

[L13]

Hi, this message appears if the paths are not of the same type e.g. the left path is a folder and the right is a symlink or is not of the type folder/file. You can only compare files with files and folders with folders. Other combinations like folder with symlink are not possible because a symlink is treated as a separate type.

[vadimcn]

Hmm, you are right, one of them was a directory symlink. It turns out that adding a trailing slash actually makes it work.

Still, something weird is going on with the folder selector: when I navigated the directories (after having clicked the folder icon), the path had the trailing slash, however, once I clicked [ok], the path copied to the diff panel was missing that slash.

[L13]

Hmm, you are right, one of them was a directory symlink. It turns out that adding a trailing slash actually makes it work.

Yes, a trailing slash is the same like /. and means you are 'in' the folder.

Still, something weird is going on with the folder selector: when I navigated the directories (after having clicked the folder icon), the path had the trailing slash, however, once I clicked [ok], the path copied to the diff panel was missing that slash.

I tested every platform (mac, windows, linux) and couldn't find any different behavior on each. Selecting a folder doesn't show me a path. After clicking 'Open' the path was without a slash at the end. There was no 'Ok' Button. Do you mean something different?

[vadimcn]

Sorry, forgot to mention this was in a remote session. It looks like this in the file selector:

But after [ok] the slash gets dropped:

Not sure if this is possible to fix, but at least some extra diagnostics on errors would have helped.

[L13]

The dialog is from VS Code which is different in each enviroment. This is one function call. It returns always an uri object which provides the information. I have no influence what you see.

I published a new version which changes the error message. It should be more clear now what's going wrong.

[vadimcn]

Thanks, much better now!

A small question though: if you can detect it's a symlink, why not resolve link target and if that turns out to be a directory, just use that?