Is it possible to use WinMerge inside Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Source Safe 6.0?

Question

I would like to use WinMerge as the default diff tool inside VS2008 from the solutions explorer in place of the "Compare..." context menu item. Is this possible? I'm looking for a quick replacement of the current bland diff tool an I just like WinMerge better. I'm not interested in going to the folder explorer and doing the comparison there.

Im using Visual Source Safe 6.0 not TFS

Is this possible? Thanks in advanced!

Answer 1

Yep, it's possible!

See this link: http://whyiamright.wordpress.com/2008/01/18/changing-the-diffmerge-program-used-by-visual-studio/

Tools-> Options. In the tree, choose Source Control, then the plugin of your choice (VS team Foundation, Source Safe, etc).

Click the "Configure User Tools" button, click add, then specify the appropriate extension, operation, EXE, and arguments list.

This site: has the settings for many, including winmerge: http://blogs.msdn.com/jmanning/articles/535573.aspx

EDIT: You mentioned VSS: Check out the Winmerge manual here: http://winmerge.org/docs/manual/VersionControl.html. It says how to do it about 1/5th the way down the page.

Answer 2

I have been wondering about this as well and have not found anything to make it possible.

For now, it looks like the answer to our question is "No".