How do I merge text in visual studio 2010?

Question

Howdy,

To preface this I am an Emacs refugee on Visual Studio 2010's shores and am certain that I am working against the tool. Please could someone point me in the right direction. My problem is the MyProject.csproj file is kept under version control using TFS and my coworkers have made a number of changes that no longer get along with my version. Not a problem, I can just merge the changes and make things right. But I can't, or rather I don't know how to. The compare tool in VS only taunts me, it won't let me pick and choose differences like I need to.

What I would love to do is just use Merge in Emacs, run through the file hitting L(eft), R(ight), B(oth) and be done with it in no time. What I don't understand is why there are certain changes that are accepted by default, that I cannot alter. I think that what it is doing is identifying changes that I made to the ancestor document and forcing those to be made while providing me the option of merging the changes from my coworkers. My issue is that these things are contradictory and I would like to ignore my change to Line 12 while accepting the Repository's Line 42 but applying my Line 106.

But I cannot figure out how to tell it "no" to Line 12.

This has to be common, what does one do in VS to get this to work?

Thanks!

Answer 1

The standard diff tool that comes with Visual Studio ... blows. Its not intuitive and doesn't work all that well.

But its very easy to integrate different diff tools. I'm using this one:

http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/dace3633-0b51-4629-85d4-c59cdce5bb3b?SRC=VSIDE

(no affiliation; its free so don't ding me for spam kthx). Works pretty damn good. You might find one out there better suited for your tastes, in which case you can integrate it into visual studio. (again, not associated with me!)

Answer 2

Hi, I advise you to use WinMerge to compare or merge files with VS You can define as Will said.