fatal: external diff died, stopping at error when using with git

[srustamo]

The fatal: external diff died, stopping at Project_A.xls appears when using excel_cmp attribute for git diff. This seems like an expected behavior, perhaps a more graceful exiting could be used. Any ideas?

The setup is similar to this:
~/.gitconfig

[diff "xls"]
binary = true
command = ~/bin/ExcelCompare/bin/excel_cmp

~/.config/git/attributes

*.xls diff=xls

[na-ka-na]

Someone pointed out in #29 that it is working for them. Can you download 0.6.0 release https://github.com/na-ka-na/ExcelCompare/releases/download/0.6.0/ExcelCompare-0.6.0.zip and see if it works for you?

[andebor]

I just installed the 0.6.0 release and see the same error as mentioned. My configuration is practically identical. The diff is working fine, but the error message is always present at the bottom.

[na-ka-na]

Ok I will it out and report back.

[andebor]

Great! Let me know if you need me to test anything.

[alexlin0]

I hit this problem as well using 0.6.1. I read that when git uses an external diff tool that the return code from the diff program is treated as a program exit code, not a diff exit code. Git interprets a return of 0 as no error and anything else as an error.

I worked around this by creating a new excel_cmp_git shell script that returns zero if diff return code is either 0 or 1. Other return codes are returned as is.

#!/bin/sh
java -ea -Xmx512m -cp "/usr/local/Cellar/excel-compare/0.6.1/libexec/*" com.ka.spreadsheet.diff.SpreadSheetDiffer "$@"
rc=$?
if [ $rc == 0 -o $rc == 1 ]; then
    exit 0 ;
else
    exit $rc ;
fi