by EricSB
6. April 2010 04:22
A while ago I published an article but have since lost it, so I’ve decided to re-post it as the topic came up again today and I found myself hunting for the information. This time around I stumbled on a nugget of information in a different place that makes a big difference.
For starters I found a blog post here by James Manning that contains a great post about setting up TFS to use Beyond Compare (and other comparison tools)
In order to configure Visual Studio to use Beyond Compare for a compare operation choose the following options:
- Select: Tools –> Options –> Expand Source Control –> Choose “Visual Studio Team Foundation Server.
- Select: “Configure User Tools.”
- Click the “Add” button.
- Enter “.*” in the “Extension” edit box.
- Choose “Compare” in the “Operation” combo box.
- Enter the path to BComp.exe in the “Command” edit box.
- Enter the command line parameters from the table below.
To configure TFS to use Beyond Compare for a merge operation follow the same steps above but choose “Merge” for the operation instead and provide the correct merge command line in the table below the compare table.
*Remember: Beyond Compare 3 Pro supports 3 way merging and the standard edition of it does not. Also 3 way merging is new to Beyond Compare as of version 3, so this feature is not present in version 2 of the product.
To summarize the following command line parameters are ones I’ve found to be of the most use:
Compare
| Product | Command | Arguments |
| TFS (Default) | diffmerge.exe | %1 %2 %6 %7 %5 /ignorespace |
| Beyond Compare 2 | BComp.exe | %1 %2 /title1=%6 /title2=%7 |
Merge
| Product | Command | Arguments |
| TFS (Default) | diffmerge.exe | /merge %1 %2 %3 %4 %6 %7 |
| Beyond Compare 2 | BComp.exe | %1 %2 /title1=%6 /title2=%7 |
| Beyond Compare 3 (Standard – no 3-way Merge) | BComp.exe | %1 %2 /savetarget=%4 /title1=%6 /title2=%7 |
Beyond Compare 3
(Pro / 3-way merge) | BComp.exe | %1 %2 %3 %4 /title1=%6 /title2=%7 /title3=%8 /title4=%9 |