Aside a more expensive license price, Araxis Merge is way much nicer and easier to use IMHO.

Personally, I prefer ExamDiff Pro. And if you ever need to search something on your hard disk, try FileLocator Pro!

FileLocator Pro is a great tool. They have a free version called agent ranksack.

Both are great and remove all thoses problems that ms-windows file search has.

I haven't tried ExamDiff, but I have used Araxis quite a bit and I think Beyond Compare is both better AND cheaper than Araxis Merge.

Here's another second for Beyond Compare:

http://www.donationcoder.com/Reviews/Archive/CompareTools/

I've not used anything but WinMerge (http://winmerge.sourceforge.net/) for ages - the main improvement I'd like to see is a 'whole tree' view in the directory comparison view.

I'll second that emotion, Jeff. BeyondCompare is a great tool I have used for years.

Araxis Merge is great also, but I like the vibe of BC more.

hmmmm,I'll have to try out BC. I've been using KDiff for a long time. Previous to that I just used whatever diff tool was built into the SCM I was using at the time.

Very awesome tool. I've been using Beyond Compare for over a year now.

After reading about Araxis and BC here last December, I tried them both and bought a license for BC; haven't looked back since, great tool.

Yep, Beyond Compare is a really nice application. Written in Delphi, too (http://www.borland.com/Delphi)

I'll second the recommendation for WinMerge. Can anyone provide a breakdown of the features in Beyond Compare (or Araxis) that make it worth the price over WinMerge?

Yeah, I agree. A comparison between Beyond Compare and other file/folder comparison tools would be very handy. I have been using Beyond Compare for about a year now, too and would probably need a good reason to switch ;-)

Not only is Beyond Compare one of my must have development tools, it is also one of my must have Windows Power User tools. The ability to sync entire drives and directories is great, it even supports syncing over FTP.

I am using it right now to remove data from a dying 200 gig hard drive. Unlike other file copy tools it will continue if one of the files fails. Then it shows a whole tree view allowing you to drill down into the individual directories and files to see what is in sync.

Also the image comparison plug-in is amazing. I've never seen anything like it. If you do any kind of graphic work you will find it indispensable.

Beyond the incredible feature list I would say one of the main things I love about BC is that it is very fast and intuitive to use. Sure, someone else might expect it to work a different way, so the best way to find out if you cannot live without it is to download it and try the 30 trial. That is what hooked me and got me to switch from what I was previously using.

I've used BC for quite a while, and it's an excellent tool.

One of the things that's nice about it is the extensibility; you can write your own comparison add-ins.

Yep, its a great tool. I used WinMerge until I was told about this tool by a guy on our release managment team. Most of our devs hadn't heard of it.

we've been praising beyond compare for a long time.

in addition to giving out a few copies in our november software drawing, members of donationcoder.com can get 25% off beyond compare through the first week in december:
http://www.donationcoder.com/Specials/index.html

make sure while you're at the site to check out the Dina Programming font mentioned previously on codinghorror.

(donating any amount to our site makes you a member).

I've used Beyond Compare for years now and have a personal copy. We used it at my last position and it worked flawlessly. Highly recommended!

> Can anyone provide a breakdown of the features in Beyond Compare (or Araxis) that make it worth the price over WinMerge?

Beyond Compare is only $30! I know free is free, but $30 is only $30. And a 25% discount on top of that if you join Donation Coder. You cheapskates ;)

Give the 30-day free trial a shot. I have zero affiliate stake in this, I just think BC is an essential -- and very inexpensive -- tool.

forgot to mention, donationcoder.com did a giant review of comparison tools and beyondcompare came out on top.

you can read all about why we loved it so much, and see how it compares to araxis, and even see tons of screenshots and movies in our review:

http://www.donationcoder.com/Reviews/Archive/CompareTools/index.html

Araxis Merge Professional is the version that can handle a full 3-way compare and merge. That functionality is VERY VERY nice, especially when you need to manage a client who has really let their code go all over the place (not my current employer!). I like the way Araxis handles "alignment" between the 3 sources -- much better than VSS. This is discussed in the donationcoder site.

I like WinMerge, and wish they would add 3-way compare-merge to their product -- maybe they need some help :).

Beyond Compare looks like it handles alignment well also. I will be testing it now. The donationcoder site has a animation of it also: http://www.donationcoder.com/Reviews/Archive/CompareTools/flash/BeyondCompare1.html

I'm testing another tool, called SibSerf http://world.std.com/~jdveale/index.html#sibserf
-- which takes a different approach to 3-way compare and merge. Pretty interesting.

Dear goodness. Beyond Compare is essential for my dev work, webdesign work, deployment work, debugging work, etc. It is amazing what it will do for the price, and it keeps getting better.

Beyond Compare rocks!

I have been using the tool for years. I am speachless when I see how much time and effort BC saves to me every day. Amazing.

I've changed 2 work places in the last 4 years and BC was and still is my best companion regarding merging and comparison. I use WinMerge at home cause it's free.

I'm with Chris, my allegiance is with ExamDiff Pro. As a standard text file / directory comparison tool they look very similar but ExamDiff Pro's extensions look like they edge out BC. My favorite is the Word extension. Rather than treating them as binary files, it pre-processes Word files and does a text compare so you can actually see what differs in the Word document. Pretty nice.

http://www.scootersoftware.com/ubbthreads/postlist.php?Cat=0&Board=BC3News

Beyond Compare 3 Professional is coming this year. BC3Pro is a complete re-architecture of the product bringing 3-way merge, syntax highlighting, dynamic recompare, full-screen editing, and much much more. The bang for the buck is going to get bigger fast.

Been using BC many years. Continues to be awesome. It is a real workhorse of an application. Can't wait for BC3 but hope they don't over shoot. Part of what makes BC2 so great is its strait forward approach.

I absolutely LOVE BeyondCompare. Honestly, I started my computing life about the same time as the first PC's really came out (1983), and I really find BeyondCompare to be one of the nicest, and generally most useful, and also visually easiest/nicest programs I have ever used.

I have tried about a dozen other differencing programs over the years, and this is just so far superior, there is not even a contest.

I have a question about Beyond Compare. I work for a large company and we have a huge amount of code. I am new to Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation System, but I am the configuration manager for this. I will still be using Visual Studio 6.0 for our older products.

Our process is to do inspections by comparing the original version (version 0) with the newer version (version 1). But many times the developer has to do rework. Is this tool able to compare the newer version (version 1) of the inspection with another newer one (version 2) with the rework?

Thanks,
kennerlj

I am a licensed user of BC2. I am in need of 3-way comparison and merge. It is crucial to have this feature for version control software, because you will be performing 3-way comparisons and merges in this situation. BC2 cannot become a cimplete replacement for Ratinal CLearCase's merge manager due to the lack of 3-way comparisons, for example.

What I need even more than 3-way comparison is a diff tool that can parse XML documents and compare/merge them. BC2 does not do this. Does anyone know if Araxis Merge does?

Imagine an XML document that exists on a single line. Try comparing and merging that in BC2, to see how useless it is for XML documents.

use pspad freeware editor to conver one line of xml and reformat it. this tool will make it multi line.
do it with both the files and use Beyond compare! just because you have bad data, it does not make BC a bad tool..
It is great tool!

Just to let you know, there is absolutely nothing wrong or bad with an XML document exsting on a single line. It is used quite frequently. Araxis Merge does not currently support parsing XML documents for comparison, so it would not help in this situation either. In searching, the only diff tool that does is Altova's diffdog, but that utility is lacking in other areas, IMO.

Sure -- I could certainly format the files manually prior to using a diff tool, but if there's one that does it for me automatically AND reformats it back to the way it was before it made changes, that would be an IDEAL diff tool for my needs.

kennerlj,

Beyond Compare can compare any two text files, show you differences between the two, and allow you to selectively choose which differences to include or exclude to one or both versions you are comparing. Beyond Compare is a great choice for casual users in need of a diff tool. The tool is not perfect, however, and may not be the best choice for Software Engineers.

Some features that would make Beyond Compare even better include:

* In-line editing (manually editing in BC2 is extremely cumbersome)
* Customized syntax coloring for source code
* An improved way to manually align incorrectly matched comparisons (the current way to do it is very cumbersome). No diff tool is going to match things up perfectly, so a quick way to fix it is ideal.
* The ability to compare and show differences in binary files.

Although the tool is great, these reviews really are ignoring the stuff above missing (except for in-line editing).

@JT

"Just to let you know, there is absolutely nothing wrong or bad with an XML document existing on a single line."

...except that, for example, it's unreadable by a human being, like a program on one line.

imak, I agree that it is unreadable. Its intent was to be machine readable, however. Imagine transmitting XML via SOAP. Most developers would transmit machine readable XML. When debugging this code, it would help to have a diff utility that could parse XML.

XML has been around for a long time now. It's time that diff utilities caught up and supported it correctly, I think.

To the people wanting xml comparison - check the xml tidy extension on beyond compare (available from the beyond compare site).

It uses the xml tidy tool to normalise and indent xml in a standard way, so you can compare two files that are laid out in different ways, for example one on a single line, the other half indented.

you can even play with the xml tidy parameters, and do things like sort the attributes, in case that's an issue.

To Bob, re xml tidy - good call! took a while to find it - quickest is to go to support tab, click knowledge base articles, entered xml tidy in search, then scroll down... works a treat, thanks.

Just a note, I love BC. But, it doesn't handle files with hebrew character set. Perhaps a future update can fix this?

BC is used a lot in our shop. It can do binary searches in folder compares which can be very, very helpful.

3-way merging is to be supported in Beyond Compare 3.

Also, you can download rules from Beyond Compare's site for Microsoft Word files, etc.. There are lots of rules and plug-ins on there, check them out.

http://www.scootersoftware.com/download.php?c=kb_morerules

Beyond compare is the greatest.