Do you know any file comparison add-in for visual studio

Question

Is there any built-in, add-in solution for visual studio to compare two files and display result with differences? I could\'t find one...

Answer 1

Here is an excellent post that describes integration of many 3rd party diff and merge tools into Visual Studio - including araxis, beyond compare, WinMerge and many others. The post is badly needed, since the command-line parameters that VS can supply aren't fully documented.

Personally, I switched from the built-in tool to Araxis, and am generally happy with it. I am also curious about bazaar, which supposedly (according to the colorful author of its diff-component), "solves the diff problem"... Anyone has any experience with that?

Answer 2

I use WinMerge. Not as good as Beyond Compare but it's free and open source.

Also check out Visual Studio Comparison Tools, it's a Visual Studio add-in that connects it to WinMerge.

Answer 3

SlickEdit Tools Versioning Toolbox has the same diff tool built in as the SlickEdit programmer's editor. The Versioning Toolbox is not free but isn't that expensive either. The diff tool is very nice.

Answer 4

Not that I know of, but Beyond Compare is probably worth a look anyway.

Answer 5

Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition has a built in version (based on WinDiff?) but you can incorporate third party tools e.g.

Beyond Compare which I regularly use.

See here for how-to.

Answer 6

That functionality appears to be related to Source Control. So it is really as source control issue.

If you are not using Source Control - You should be - Try The Vault from www.sourcegear.com for a good (and free for one user) commercial source control system. There are others and they should come with a comparision tool (The Vault has one and its installed into VS when you install the vault client and connect to a source controlled project).