ABDiff ships with a command-line tool (abd) for opening comparisons/merges and for CI image comparisons.

Installation

Install CLI

Choose File ▸ Install CLI….
Pick an installation folder.
Add that folder to your PATH so abd is available in Terminal.

PATH Editing

How to add a folder to the PATH:

Edit startup file.

nano ~/.zshrc

Add this line and save:

export PATH="$HOME/installation/folder:$PATH"

Reload the startup (or restart the shell).

source ~/.zshrc

Quick CLI Usage

These are examples of common CLI operations.

# Open one file in the app
abd left.txt

# Open two files (ABDiff infers viewer mode)
abd left.txt right.txt

# Print CLI version
abd version

# Explicit two-way compare
abd --local left.txt --remote right.txt

# Explicit three-way merge
abd --base Base.txt --local Ours.txt --remote Theirs.txt --result Merged.txt

# Compare images in CI (no UI)
abd image left.png right.png --metric ssim --threshold 0.98

# Launch without blocking
abd --no-wait left.txt right.txt

Running abd image prints a score and exits 0 when similar (within threshold), or 1 when different.