I have an answer for my own question, somewhat:
Meld has two modes:
- VC (Version Control): Meld compares against the VC image of the directory, and ignores the
File Filters
option
- Non-VC mode: the filters kick in
This makes somewhat sense, a way.
I use meteor.js which has a .meteor
folder for project meta data. In it there are pulled packages, their src and other meta. Many files/folder, in short. The .meteor
folder is listed in the .gitignore
file, so git excludes it. Meld on the other hand, revisits it and spends a while scanning its sub folders, which seems to take "forever".
I looked for ways to prevent it. One direction was to use the File Filters
feature. Another, would be for meld (in VC-mode) skip ignored content.
Meld has a reported issue "Have meld use the .gitignore to limit scanned dir/files", see:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=684400
As of today this issue is fixed (repo head contains it). Looks like it will be in meld ver 3.11.1 and onward. As expected, this fix solves my problem.
As a side note, it might take a while for this fix to get to Deb/Ubuntu, so if you need it, use meld head from: http://meldmerge.org/development.html