Replacing TFS Diff Tool
Comments(5)
The TFS diff tool is horrible. It a pretty bare minimum difference between the two versions. The UI is basic.
Nice huh? This line changed, but you’re on your own to know what characters actually changed. While tooling around in the Visual Studio Options dialog I can across the settings that would let me change the diff and merge tools.Check out Tools | Options | Source Control | Visual Studio Team Foundation | Configure User Tools…
I needed a another diff tool, so I downloaded a trial of Beyond Compare and plugged it in there and it worked great! Except, in 15 days it wouldn’t be working so great unless I could convince someone to shell out the $X to get us past the trial. After pinging some of my buddies about what diff tools they use, I decided to try the diff tool in TortoiseSVN. I installed it and added TortoiseMerge to the dialog.
Ran my compare again and Bang! A new diff dialog appears that is much better than before.
That is still a lot of redundant clutter for me, so switching views helps a little with that.
We no longer get the detail about what changed on a line, but it is so much easier to manually identify when the rows overlap, I’m not missing it.
That is the view I use for TortoiseMerge too! Wow, I had no idea Microsoft had put so much time into their UI.
I’d recommend spending the money on Beyond Compare, even if you have to buy it yourself. I’ve been using it for several years and find it very useful. It will do folder comparisons and merges as well as “simple” comparisons.
@Bill Unfortunately, personal software is frowned upon at our organization.
When setting up Beyond Compare, there is a good blog post here http://www.ronaldwidha.net/2008/11/26/the-best-comparison-tool-and-vs2008-integration/
Thanks for the info. I hate the TFS differ, and I really want to use TortoiseMerge. On a side note, the background for this page is terrible.