Using Visual Studio as diff tool

[Urs Enzler]

Hi

I tried to use Visual Studio 2012 as diff tool.

I entered the following in the global settings:

Difftool = VS

Path to difftool = C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe

Difftool command = "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe" /diff "$LOCAL" "$REMOTE"

When I invoke the diff tool on a file in GitExtensions then VS starts-up but shows me an error message:

The following files were specified on the command line: c:\Program Files (x86)/Git/diff
These files could not be found and will not be loaded.

Any suggestions?

[Dave Brotherstone]

Vs2012 has no /diff switch, according to http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/xee0c8y7(v=vs.110).aspx

Apart from that, this is a sledgehammer to crack a nut! Try diffmerge from sourcegear, or kdiff3, or even winmerge.

Dave

[Urs Enzler]

Visual Studio has a /diff command in version 11 (2012).

And I found how to get it running: instead of /diff I had to use \diff (GitExtensions seams to switch all slashes).

Of course, there are lighter tools than Visual Studio. But we do perform commit reviews (one developer showing the changes made to another before committing). And in this situation it is very comfortable to have full Intellisense and code highlighting to make additional changes to the code during the review.

But unfortunately, on every diff, a new Visual Studio instance is started, making the process very slow and therefore unusable :-(

Thanks

Urs

[John Gietzen]

Or Beyond Compare.  I highly recommend Beyond Compare (even with the price tag.)