TortoiseHg Workbench: few changes, but “File is larger than the specified max size.”

Question

Firstly, in this message:

File or diffs not displayed: File is larger than the specified max size.
maxdiff = 1024 KB

Display the file anyway

… what does maxdiff mean?

Secondly, in many cases – where there are few changes – clicking Display the file anyway displays a very manageable amount of text. So why the warning?

Can I change a setting so that it always displays?

Answer 1

wdavidhj:

Secondly, in many cases – where there are few changes – clicking Display the file anyway displays a very manageable amount of text. So why the warning?

The diff algorithm can get very slow when dealing with large amounts of text. The maxdiff setting is to keep from accidentally clicking on a file where it takes a long time to create a diff. There is no “best value” (0 will make it so there is no max). Most of the time this is okay, but clicking on a 70MB notes XML file that changes a lot with each revision can take a while.

Answer 2

File > Settings >
User’s Global Settings > TortoiseHg > set Max Diff Size to
0.

PADev.