WinMerge

1
WinMerge
2
What is WinMerge

• WinMerge is a free software tool for comparing
  and merging two files. It is useful for
  determining what has changed between two
  different versions of a file and merging those
  differences.
• WinMerge is an open source project. The program
  is developed and maintained by volunteers in
  their spare time. WinMerge is GPL licensed.

3
Benefits

• Is easy to use
• Provide multi-language support
• Can handle a variety of text file formats such as
  TXT, DOC, HTML
• Can compare various types of files such as ASCII
  Files, Binary Files, Unicode Files, Multilingual
  Files and East Asian Language Files
• Can clearly highlight differences between files
• Can ignore white space and letter case
  differences

4
Limitations

• Cannot merge Binary Files properly
• Cannot merge Multilingual Files and East Asian
  Language Files properly in Windows 95/98/ME

5
WinMerge Versions

• Stable Versions
• Are recommended for most users
• Have even second numbers such as 2.4, 2.6, 2.8
• Development Versions
• Are recommended for users who want to test the
  latest features added after the last Stable
  Version
• Have odd second numbers such as 2.5, 2.7
• Are not as extensively tested as the Stable
  Versions
• Are not expected to have major bugs
• Can be used in production

6
Installation

• Download the latest executable file from the
  WinMerge homepage WinMerge.org or the project
  status page SourceForge.net
• Run the installer
• Accept the license agreement
• Choose a location of installation
• Select the components you want to install or use
  one of the pre-configured combinations of
  components
• Select WinMerge translation files (optional)

7
WinMerge Development Team

• Active Developers (9)
• Christian List - Project Manager
• Dean Grimm - Project Manager
• Jochen Tucht - Support Analyst
• Alexander Skinner - Graphic Designer
• Tim Gerundt - Web Developer
• Kim Varis - Lead Programmer
• Marcel Gosselin - Programmer
• Gal Hammer - Programmer
• Takashi Sawanaka - Programmer
• Translators (over 30)

8
Communication with the team

• Post a message to the WinMerge discussion forum
• http//sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id41
  639
• Subscribe to one of the WinMerge Mailing Lists
• http//winmerge.org/support/mailing-lists.php
• Announcement List receive announcements for any
  new releases of WinMerge
• Support List ask or discuss support related
  questions
• User List ask or discuss application related
  questions
• Translation List ask or discuss translation
  related questions and coordinate the task of
  translation
• Developer List discuss any source code changes
  for participating developers of WinMerge

9
Why contribute to WinMerge

• WinMerge is popular
• WinMerge is important
• WinMerge is not easy or trivial
• WinMerge is mature
• WinMerge is always improving
• WinMerge is flexible
• WinMerge is used to develop WinMerge (dogfooding)

10
How can I help

• Coding
• Testing
• Writing new or improving existing documentation
  for both users and developers
• Translating
• Improving the installer
• Triaging various tracker items
• Bugs
• RFE
• To-do

11
What to do with a tracker item

• Determine if its a bug at all
• Determine if the bug is still present in the
  latest version
• Create a test case for the bug describing how
  this bug can be easily reproduced
• Submit files or folder structure which can be
  used to reproduce the bug
• Verify the fix and make sure that nothing else is
  broken as a result

12
Project Design and Implementation

• WinMerge is mostly written in C/C and compiled
  with Visual Studio
• WinMerge uses MFC heavily, but the development
  team would like to remove MFC dependency from the
  back-end code in the near future
• There is a lot of low level code handling
  different types of files

13
What is a difference in WinMerge

• Instead of comparing single letters or words,
  WinMerge's compare engine uses lines as a basic
  unit.
• WinMerge combines consecutive different lines
  into one single block. This block of different
  lines is called "a difference" in WinMerge.

14
Missing Lines
15
Merge Two Files (1)

• Carefully study all the highlighted differences
  between the two files being compared

16
Merge Two Files (2)

• Select one difference or several differences and
  copy them from one side to another using the
  difference navigation commands under the Merge
  Menu

17
Folder Compare
18
Folder Compare Result

• A complete list of icons appearing on the
  result of a folder compare
• Identical text files
• Differing text files
• Identical binary files
• Differing binary files
• Left-only folders
• Right-only folders
• Left-only files
• Right-only files
• Items that couldn't be compared - it usually
  happens when another program has locked the file
• Aborted item - WinMerge did not finish
  comparing this item when compare was stopped and
  result is unknown

19
Other Features

• Plug-ins
• They are DLLs or scriptlets
• They are used to decompress or transform a file
  into a viewable format, or preprocess files to
  hide some of their differences
• Filters
• There are two kinds of filters File Filters and
  Line Filters
• Filters are based on regular expressions
• Version Control Integration
• Command Line Control
• Conflict File Resolution

20
Thank You

• Questions?
• Comments?