File differencing software on Windows?

Question

Just wondering what's out there that everyone likes. I have to merge some changes among several developers (C#) and wanted to see what kind of alternatives to windiff are around.

Answer 1

SourceGear DiffMerge is free,

Beyond Compare is a good commercial one.

Others I tried are,

UltraCompare

WinMerge

Answer 2

I use a file Diff program, which is included in TortoiseSVN, a very good one.

Answer 3

KDiff3

I use it on Windows. It's GPL.

Answer 4

WinMerge is the one our whole company uses

Answer 5

BeyondCompare, can compare binary files, text files, images, word files, zip file and the list goes on. Most of what I compare are source files, different rules can be created for different file extensions so it can syntax highlight, ignore unimportant differences such as white space or comments etc.

Answer 6

I like Winmerge a lot. It's Open Source, and easy to use:

Answer 7

I think UltraCompare is the best.

Answer 8

Doesn't have a pretty UI, but does produce differences based on the code structure (identifiers, expressions, statements, methods, ...) and abstract editing operations (insert, delete, move, rename) rather than just "line edits". The deltas are thus easier to understand and so easier to analyze/merge.

See SD Smart Differencer

EDIT: 12/8/2009: Just shipped this as a plugin to IBM Eclipse RDz, with a pretty visual interface. A "plain" Eclipse version is expected in late January 2010.

Answer 9

I've been using Araxis Merge for the last 11 years. The "pro" version allows three way compares which is great for comparing your code, the baseline and a colleagues code at the same time.

When I found Araxis Merge I was on the verge of writing just such a program. I didn't do it once I saw it. I find it very useful.

I have no idea how well it compares to the numerous other choices mentioned on this thread.