Is it possible to use WinMerge inside Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Source Safe 6.0?

Question

I would like to use WinMerge as the default diff tool inside VS2008 from the solutions explorer in place of the "Compare..." context menu item. Is this possible? I'm looking for a quick replacement of the current bland diff tool an I just like WinMerge better. I'm not interested in going to the folder explorer and doing the comparison there.

I'm using Visual Source Safe 6.0 not TFS

Edifice

Answer 1

I have been wondering about this as well and have not found anything to make it possible in VSS 6.0.

For now, it looks like the answer to our question is "No".

Unskillful

The question is "is it possible?", so we have an answer, just not the one we want. – Unskillful

Answer 2

Yep, it's possible!

See this link: http://whyiamright.wordpress.com/2008/01/18/changing-the-diffmerge-program-used-by-visual-studio/

Tools-> Options. In the tree, choose Source Control, then the plugin of your choice (VS team Foundation, Source Safe, etc).

Click the "Configure User Tools" button, click add, then specify the appropriate extension, operation, EXE, and arguments list.

This site: has the settings for many, including winmerge: http://blogs.msdn.com/jmanning/articles/535573.aspx

EDIT: You mentioned VSS: Check out the Winmerge manual here: http://winmerge.org/docs/manual/VersionControl.html. It says how to do it about 1/5th the way down the page.

Copperas

I forgot to specify I have VSS6.0 so this solution wont work for me. But u still get a +1 thanks. – Edifice

The docs do not describe how to integrate it with vs2008 even as an external tool – Edifice

Answer 3

I think I have this working at a serviceable level if not optimal.

in visual studio go to tools > options > source control > plug-in settings

click the "advanced" button

in the sourcesafe options dialog, switch to the "custom editors" tab

for operation, select file difference

for file extension enter .*

for command line enter

"C:\Program Files\WinMerge\WinMergeU.exe" /x /e /ub /wl /dl %6 /dr %7 %1 %2

click the "add" button then the "ok" button.

using "compare" from a file's context menu or viewing history and selecting "diff" should bring up winmerge with the file comparison. the original is on the left and the modified file is on the right (is that the right placement? should they be swapped?). if you selected a highlighted difference, you can actually sync that area at this time as well. visual studio will just recognize the file has changed and ask you to reload. I haven't gotten to the situation where I'm in an actual "merge" situation so I'm not sure what happens there. I'll update this post if I ever have more info to add.

I'm using VS2008, sourcesafe 2005, and winmerge 2.12.4 installed to the default directory. I copied the settings from this post: http://weblogs.asp.net/garrypilkington/archive/2009/12/16/winmerge-as-a-comparison-tool-in-visual-studio-2008.aspx

Herrera

From Visual SourceSafe 2005, not Visual Studio, the %6 and %7 options don't work. I've modified the command line entry for VSS to: "C:\Program Files\WinMerge\WinMergeU.exe" /x /e /ub /wr /dl "Working Copy" /dr "SourceSafe" %2 %1 I can't get WinMerge to show the filenames in the editor panes, so I mark them as "Working Copy" and "SourceSafe" so you can at least tell what's what when merging. – Aether

Useful, but VSS 6 does not have this "Custom Editors" option. – Unskillful

Cool! That's exactly what I was looking for. Thank you. – Messily

Answer 4

As I stated previously, I don't think we can integrate WinMerge with Visual Studio 2008 and VSS 6.0.

However, I did find that VSS 2005 is backward compatible with VSS 6.0 databases. So, if your server can't change from VSS 6.0, at least perhaps you can change your client to VSS 2005, and then follow the other instructions from the answers here.

Unskillful