WinMerge explained

WinMerge
Developer:	WinMerge Development Team
Programming Language:	C++
Operating System:	Microsoft Windows
Language:	Multilingual
Genre:	Data comparison
License:	GPL

WinMerge is a free software tool for data comparison and merging of text-like files. It is useful for determining what has changed between versions, and then merging changes between versions.

WinMerge runs on Microsoft Windows.

Features

• Visual differencing and merging of text files
• Flexible editor with syntax highlighting, line numbers, and word-wrap
• Handles DOS, Unix, and Mac text file formats
• Unicode support (as of version 2.8.0, UTF-8 files are correctly read without a BOM)
• Difference pane shows current difference in two vertical panes
• Location pane shows map of files compared
• Highlights differences inside lines in file compare
• Can also generate HTML report with differences highlighted
• Regular expression-based file filters in directory compare allow excluding and including items
• Moved lines detection in file compare
• Ability to ignore whitespace and letter case changes
• Creates patch files
• Shell integration (supports 64-bit Windows versions)
• Rudimentary Visual SourceSafe and IBM DevOps Code ClearCase integration
• Archive file support using 7-Zip
• Plug-ins
• Language localization via plain-text PO files
• Online manual and installed HTML help manual
• Generates normal, context, and unified patches.

Codebases and forks

WinMerge 2011 (discontinued) Developer: jtuc Latest Preview Version: 2011.009.217 Programming Language: C++ Operating System: Microsoft Windows Language: Multilingual Genre: Data comparison License: GPL

WinMerge 2011 Developer: datadiode Latest Preview Version: 0.2011.211.170 Programming Language: C++ Operating System: Microsoft Windows Language: Multilingual Genre: Data comparison License: GPL

For a planned development of version 3.x ^[1] no commits have been made to the 3.0 codebase since 2011.^[2]

In 2011 a fork of the 2.x codebase titled "WinMerge 2011" was created. This new branch has continued to see active feature and bug fix development. It has also removed ATL/MFC dependencies so that WinMerge can be built using the free Visual C++ Express editions.^[3]

See also

• Comparison of file comparison tools

External links

• • • Compare and merge files and folders with WinMerge Lifehacker
• WinMerge Portable
• Sdottaka's WinMerge on BitBucket and on GitHub (a fork with additional features and Japanese language support) (gone)
• WinMerge 2011 on BitBucket and on GitHub (a fork with additional features) (gone)

Notes and References

1. Web site: WinMerge 3.x . wiki . . 2011-03-10 . 2012-09-10 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20170411055137/https://bitbucket.org/grimmdp/winmerge/wiki/Home . 2017-04-11.
2. Web site: commits . wiki . . 2011-03-10 . 2014-06-27 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20170411055241/https://bitbucket.org/grimmdp/winmerge/commits/all . 2017-04-11.
3. Web site: WinMerge 2011 . . 2014-04-28 . 2014-04-28 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20140429045134/https://bitbucket.org/jtuc/winmerge2011/ . 2014-04-29.