Visual Studio 2015, code review, and custom compare/merge tool, is there a way to make all of this work?

Question

I have configured Visual Studio 2015, which uses Team Foundation Version Control, to use Beyond Compare 4 as its merge and compare tool.

This, however, makes the code review functionality nonfunctional since code review relies on the built-in compare tool to give it the source-related comments, etc.

Is there a way to configure this so that it:

1. Uses my custom (Beyond Compare 4) tool for normal compares and merges
2. Uses the built-in compare functionality when conducting a code review

The dialogs for setting up a custom compare and merge tool doesn't seem to have anything that helps here, and I've looked through the rest of the settings without finding anything.

Collarbone

Did you try recommendations from this thread? #4466738 – Sweeping

Yes, but that is replacing the compare tool altogether, including when I try to use codereview. Basically, if I configure Visual Studio to use Beyond Compare or any other 3rd party tool, and then start a code review I lose the ability to add code comments because when I try to do that, it opens up the 3rd party tool that knows nothing about code reviews. – Collarbone

As far as I saw, there is no such option. Try contacting beyond compare's support. – Sweeping

try it out with Kdiff3 #25870991 – Stallings

None of the external tools are able to communicate with Visual Studio about this, only the built-in compare tool can provide comments for code reviews. – Collarbone

Answer 1

I don't think VS 2015 offers such funcionallity. There is no way to separete code review compare utility from standard compare. Moreover it seems that Beyond Compare 4 doesn't support code reviews inside VS. However I found 2 solutions to your problem:

• Use a software that supports both standard compare and code review (comments etc.) for e.g. https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/dace3633-0b51-4629-85d4-c59cdce5bb3b
• Use VS 2012/ TFS 2012 as in that version code reviews are always performed with buildin compare ultility: https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/vstudio/en-US/e7bf2a2d-8347-40ee-9561-fef55c4f0686/tfs-2012vs-2012-code-reviews-diff-tool?forum=tfsgeneral

Conic