Kdiff3 Merge Tool Download
Jemima Babicke
I've previously been using kdiff3 which is pretty good in terms of functionality but I feel that the layout is not optimal, too much screen space is wasted on menubars.
I also missed my vim keybindings in the cases where you have to manually change the text.
So recently I went back vimdiff but haven't really been finding it satisfactory.
There are multiple tools to compare files: diffutils, meld, diffuse, kdiff3, kompare, vbindiff, xdelta3, diffoscope, also some file managers can compare files (like double commander, just need to setup two shortcuts for cm_CompareContents and cm_CompareDirectories in preferences).
Staying up-to-date in a software, writing, or design project is hard - especially when multiple people are working on it. Without the right tools, you won't be able to understand the changes that move the project forward.
This is where a diff tool comes in handy. It makes changes visible and helps you understand them. In this article, we've compiled a short list that helps you get an overview of the best diff tools on Windows.
Being free and open source, Meld is a very popular tool on Windows (it's also available for Linux). It supports three-way comparing and merging and lets you edit files directly from the comparison view. Apart from diffing files, Meld also supports comparison of folders.
The Beyond Compare team makes a fine diff tool for Windows (as well as macOS and Linux, by the way). It goes well beyond (pun intended) diffing simple text and also allows comparing PDF, Excel and image files. The "Pro" version also includes a solid three-way merge.
Another free and open source tool answers to the name of KDiff3. The project hasn't seen many updates in recent years (though you may be able to find more recent releases through this page), but it remains a solid diff and merge tool that should satisfy basic needs.
Much like Araxis, the DeltaWalker diff tool also lets you compare office files. However, it goes one step further by letting you compare file archives like ZIP, JAR, and TAR files. If you're regularly performing comparisons on a folder basis, it's good to know that DeltaWalker shines with great performance in this area. DeltaWalker supports Windows, macOS and Linux.
Perforce, the company best known for its enterprise version control platform, also offers a solid diff tool: P4Merge is free of charge and comes with a basic feature set that makes it an interesting option on Windows, macOS and Linux.
Besides offering all the standard diff and merge capabilities, Code Compare comes with some special features like syntax highlighting, semantic code comparison and a VisualStudio integration.
The basic version can be used free of charge, while the Professional Edition delivers the full feature set.
Guiffy is a full-featured tool with syntax highlighting, three-way comparisons and merges, and multiple comparison algorithms. It comes in pro and expert versions, and supports Windows, macOS and Linux.
Another aspect to watch out for is integrations: before choosing your favorite tool, you should make sure that it plays nicely with the rest of your tool chain. I can already confirm that most of the mentioned tools work seamlessly with Tower, our own Git client.
SQL Source Control. Source Control looks in the registry for Software\Scooter Software\Beyond Compare 3in either HKLM or HKCU, for a value of a key called ExePath. If found, it checks that the file path defined in that key exists, and if so uses that as the location for the merge tool. Do you have this key present?
First we will create a test repository and a test file on which we will create a merge conflict later on.(in this example, the commands are executed with PowerShell in Windows, but the GIT commands are exactly the same on any other shell or OS)
When there is a conflict a tool that performs conflict resolution will comparethose three files against one another in order to try and resolve anyconflicting changes without human intervention. Any conflicts that cannot beautomatically resolved must be resolved manually by a person.
Git is one such tool that performs conflict resolution but there are also manyothers. In general, a conflict resolution algorithm will produce the bestresults by starting with all three versions of the conflicted file instead ofjust looking at the latest two versions. An excellent algorithm, such as theone Git uses, will do even more work.
Some mergetools do allow the user to selectively turn off the diff comparisonin order to only compare two panes at a time. This helps to reduce visual noisebut still requires the end-user manually resolve all conflicts.
The last category of mergetools entirely rely on the conflict resolution thatGit automatically performs and stores in MERGED. They usually work bysplitting MERGED into two halves and showing the end-user each half asa two-way diff.
These tools may, optionally, show the end-user additional information thatcould be useful in understanding the file history leading up to the conflict.This often includes temporarily showing LOCAL, REMOTE, or BASE orinvoking additional Git commands to show the file history. However the actualconflict resolution is done by resolving the two halves of MERGED thatcontain the minimal, remaining conflicts.
Given the large prevalence of tools in that first category, defaulting to anopt-out setting will positively affect many more users than an opt-in settingwould. Plus the authors of more sophisticated mergetools that prefer it to bedisabled are better able to recognize the pros and cons and make an informedchoice.
The tool does an excellent job of navigating a whole repository, not justresolving conflicts, and provides easy-access to file history and the state ofthe repository. This is exactly the kind of tool that helps new programmers tosee what needs to happen and helps seasoned programmers find relevant infoquickly. The conflict resolution features are the weakest features (seesuggestions below).
Identical output in the first tab. The second tab is now missing the LOCALand REMOTE versions of the file from before the merge since they wereoverwritten. Users that reference those versions to learn the conflict historywill want to disable the hideResolved flag for this tool.
Identical output when using the default layout. Users that have configuredanother default layout will see surprising results since LOCAL and REMOTEno longer contain the expected versions. Users that make use of other layoutswill want to disable the hideResolved flag for this tool.
Git also has other merge strategies (resolve, recursive, octopus, ours,subtree) and merge algorithms (patience, minimal, histogram, myers) that can beemployed when useful. Some of those algorithms take arguments too(ignore-space-change, ignore-all-space, ignore-space-at-eol, ignore-cr-at-eol,renormalize, rename-threshold).
In the example, we're configuring the tool to run with C# (.cs) files. But you can configure it for any of the other supported extensions like Java (.java), Visual Basic .NET (.vb) and more coming soon.
In case you want to use an external text merge tool instead of the built-in one, then it is recommended to use the SemanticMerge launch options configuration file instead of setting all the arguments in the configuration textbox provided by Tortoise Git.
In case you use the semanticmergetool.conf configuration file, then you do not need to set all the extra arguments like -emt or -edt in your tool configuration, because they will be obtained from the configuration file.
In case you want to use an external text merge tool instead of the built-in one, then it is recommended to use the SemanticMerge launch options configuration file instead of setting all the arguments in the configuration textbox provided by Atlassian.
There are conflicts where two developers added a new method but not exactly with the same contents. If that happens you will need to configure a 2 way merge tool since the built in tool is not able to handle the case.
Two developers added the same method in parallel as the image shows. During the merge, SemanticMerge will detect that the same method has been added twice, instead of adding the same method twice in two different locations as a regular text based merge tool would do. But if the methods bodies are not exactly the same, a 2-way merge will be needed to combine them together.
You will have to replace remotefile and localfile with the corresponding variables used by the tool you're configuring. In Git command line, they will be replaced with $REMOTE and $LOCAL, but in Tortoise Git they will be %base and %mine.
Remember that you will have to replace this names with the correct variables used by your tool ($REMOTE, $LOCAL, $BASE and $MERGED for Git command line but %theirs, %mine, %base and %merged for Tortoise Git).
Also remember that you will normally wrap the variables with quotation marks to be able to deal with paths that contain spaces. This way, the way to configure the tool inside the Git command line is as follows:
Basically, you've to enable the diff extension ([extensions]). Then, setup the difftool. The key is adding the opts.semanticdiff entry setting up the right params to invoke semantic as difftool.
Visual Studio Code can't be configured to directly use an external mergetool to solve the merges it detects. However, with third-party extensions, it can be configured to use the git mergetool command in such situations, so if you have SemanticMerge configured as a Git diff or mergetool, you can easily launch it within Visual Studio Code. Let's see how can do it.
There are two extensions listed here: GitDiffer and vscode-ext-git-mergetool. The first one does the job behind the hood, while the second one opens VS Code terminal to execute Git commands. With the second one it is easier to see what's happening, but, having the terminal window open over and over can be annoying. So, both extensions are listed here so you can choose which one better suits your needs.
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