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  3. which diff tool do you use?

which diff tool do you use?

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  • S Southmountain

    is there any good diff tool to recommend?

    diligent hands rule....

    B Offline
    B Offline
    Brad_C
    wrote on last edited by
    #49

    Beyond Compare 4 is by far my favorite. I have used several over the years with varying results but BC4 is accurate and can be configured specifically for different applications. The free version these days has a 30 days(usage days) license, plenty of time to get used to it and its afforable besides.

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    • S Southmountain

      is there any good diff tool to recommend?

      diligent hands rule....

      G Offline
      G Offline
      Geoff Gariepy
      wrote on last edited by
      #50

      I've been using SourceGear Diffmerge[^] for many years now. It's free and it works well on Windows, Linux and OSX. It will compare either files or folders of files.

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      • S Southmountain

        is there any good diff tool to recommend?

        diligent hands rule....

        T Offline
        T Offline
        thewazz
        wrote on last edited by
        #51

        diffuse for simple file comparisons, merging. winmerge for dirs and word docs +. both free. no code integration.

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        • S Southmountain

          is there any good diff tool to recommend?

          diligent hands rule....

          K Offline
          K Offline
          Kent K
          wrote on last edited by
          #52

          Visual studio's, since it's right there always. In the command window (View>Other Windows>Command window) type Tools.DiffFiles

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          • J JohaViss61

            I use UltraCompare It is not free. It has some nice options: Binary compare 3-way compare Folder compare PDF, Word, Zip compare Table compare

            G Offline
            G Offline
            Glenn E Lanier II
            wrote on last edited by
            #53

            Another vote for UltraCompare - not terribly expensive, UltraEdit is awesome on its own. Three-way compare is helpful in the few times it's needed.

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            • S Southmountain

              is there any good diff tool to recommend?

              diligent hands rule....

              S Offline
              S Offline
              sasadler
              wrote on last edited by
              #54

              Retired now but I used the JDiffPlugin in JEdit (my favorite text editor). The editor is very configurable and has a ton of plugins available. The JDiffPlugin was very well integrated with the editor.

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              • S Southmountain

                thanks for sharing your tricks! I find some new tools that I am not familiar with, so curious to see any people using them:

                Meld - What is Meld? Meld is a visual diff and merge tool targeted at developers.

                Beyond Compare - Beyond Compare allows you to compare files and folders.

                kdiff3 - KDiff3 is a file and directory diff and merge tool which compares and merges two or three text...

                Araxis Merge - Home of the award-winning Araxis Merge two and three-way file comparison (diff) and merging application, Araxis Find Duplicate Files, Araxis Replace In Files, and the Araxis Ketura issue tracking, project scheduling and time tracking application.

                AptDiff - AptDiff is a visual text / binary files comparison and merging utility for Windows.

                P4Merge - A valuable tool for diagnosing continuous integration bugs, Folder Diff also measures how much code must be resolved in pending merge scenarios. Visually compare two versions using image diff within P4Merge to determine changes made.

                diligent hands rule....

                M Offline
                M Offline
                matblue25
                wrote on last edited by
                #55

                +1 for Beyond Compare. I've been using it for years. I use it for comparing file-to-file and for synching folders. It's file copy is much faster than dragging and dropping with explorer.

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                • S Southmountain

                  is there any good diff tool to recommend?

                  diligent hands rule....

                  D Offline
                  D Offline
                  Dean Goddard
                  wrote on last edited by
                  #56

                  For Windows users => I've used all the free ones and while they are great, Araxis Merge is hands down the best I've used so far. Note I haven't used Beyond Compare because I didn't know it existed until just now. It looks like it has even more features and is cheaper, so I might consider changing at my next upgrade. In the mean time yes Araxis Merge costs, but as a professional it's what I need and it's not in the thousands of dollars range - also I only need to worry about the upgrade price. I love the interface and going between folder comparison to file comparison, the white noise handling options. And I love the keyboard shortcuts to speed up processing of big changes. 3 way comparisons. I've submitted feature requests, which have implemented - so that's awesome. One not so obvious feature is image comparison - very cool! And I really love the line between the chunk of codes that's different, so that you can scroll each side independently and not be forced into the merge tool trying to line it up for you and getting lost. My single biggest complaint with Araxis Merge is the purchasing / payment / upgrade path is clunky. To upgrade you have to email your request - why? Working in Sydney means my upgrade takes minimum 1 day to get a response and that's before payment and downloading? It's truly annoying if you run into problems and all you want to do is just do a merge. Fortunately in the whole 10 years of ownership it has only happened once, when I've been without Araxis Merge for a few days. But still - it would be nice if they simplified this process.

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                  • S Southmountain

                    is there any good diff tool to recommend?

                    diligent hands rule....

                    B Offline
                    B Offline
                    Br Bill
                    wrote on last edited by
                    #57

                    I've used a lot over many years and most are pretty good, some excellent. I currently rely on Deltawalker because I do a lot of work on MacOS.

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                    • D Dean Goddard

                      For Windows users => I've used all the free ones and while they are great, Araxis Merge is hands down the best I've used so far. Note I haven't used Beyond Compare because I didn't know it existed until just now. It looks like it has even more features and is cheaper, so I might consider changing at my next upgrade. In the mean time yes Araxis Merge costs, but as a professional it's what I need and it's not in the thousands of dollars range - also I only need to worry about the upgrade price. I love the interface and going between folder comparison to file comparison, the white noise handling options. And I love the keyboard shortcuts to speed up processing of big changes. 3 way comparisons. I've submitted feature requests, which have implemented - so that's awesome. One not so obvious feature is image comparison - very cool! And I really love the line between the chunk of codes that's different, so that you can scroll each side independently and not be forced into the merge tool trying to line it up for you and getting lost. My single biggest complaint with Araxis Merge is the purchasing / payment / upgrade path is clunky. To upgrade you have to email your request - why? Working in Sydney means my upgrade takes minimum 1 day to get a response and that's before payment and downloading? It's truly annoying if you run into problems and all you want to do is just do a merge. Fortunately in the whole 10 years of ownership it has only happened once, when I've been without Araxis Merge for a few days. But still - it would be nice if they simplified this process.

                      S Offline
                      S Offline
                      Southmountain
                      wrote on last edited by
                      #58

                      very valuable sharing to me:rose:

                      diligent hands rule....

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