Can't run custom script as external diff tool within sourcetree

[Jeff Lamb]

I've successfully used a custom external diff tool (an exe) for Sourcetree within Windows. That was super simple. Just put the exe path with backslashes and the two bare arguments in the arguments. However, I've tried a batch file, a shell script and a perl script as my external diff tool without success.

Currently, I've tried putting quotes around the diff command, used forward, backwards and double backwards slashes in the path. I've also tried the same variations on the arguments, including:

\"$REMOTE\" \"$LOCAL\"

Nothing seems to work. Each of the 3 scripts I've written just echo the variables passed to the script. This way I can begin developing my custom diff invocation. Here's the perl script I'm currently using

#!/usr/bin/perl
# get total arg passed to this script
my $total = $#ARGV + 1;
my $counter = 1;
 
# get script name
my $scriptname = $0;
 
print "Total args passed to $scriptname : $total\n";
 
# Use loop to print all args stored in an array called @ARGV
foreach my $a(@ARGV) {
	print "Arg # $counter : $a\n";
	$counter++;
}

print "Press ENTER to exit:";
<STDIN>;

Running "perl c:\devtools\test.pl asdf jkl;" results in:

C:\devtools>perl test.pl asdf jkl;
Total args passed to test.pl : 2
Arg # 1 : asdf
Arg # 2 : jkl;
Press ENTER to exit:

My current sourcetree diff command is:

perl C:\devtools\test.pl

with arguments:

$LOCAL $REMOTE

I've been working on this for a long time and I can't even get a command window to pop up!

[Jeff Lamb · Accepted solution]

Managed to get this to work. Sourcetree suppresses the command window, so that was my problem. I set up the perl script to write to a file and things worked from there.