You actually CAN use idea as a standalone merge tool[1], I have these lines in my .gitconfig for years now:

   [mergetool "idea"]
    cmd = /usr/bin/env idea merge "$LOCAL" "$REMOTE" "$BASE" "$MERGED"

Then you just run `git mergetool -t idea` and voilà

[1]: https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/command-line-merge-tool....

I wish IntelliJ would sell git-only tool - their three way merge tool is the best I’ve used, and would gladly pay for a license.

Actually, I think I answered my own question.

That tool is so good because it leverages the entire eco-system of IDE it is running in. The resulting merge panel is as powerful as any editor window in the IDE. It has code inspections, it detects missing imports, it does everything.

It might be the case that ripping the diff/merge tool out of the IDE would result in way inferior product than we get when we use it within the IDE.

The only issue I have with it is that it doesn't provide breadcrumbs when diffing. If you've set it to collapse unchanged fragments, it can be hard to tell when a line is in another function, conditional block, etc.

Otherwise, yeah it's amazing!

It's great. When I'm in a file in PyCharm or IntelliJ, I use ⌥⌘x (custom keymapping for select branch to compare) to select a branch to compare to and the diff is great.

Agreed. The magic button the top have saved me dev years of time.

Which magic button?