How to diff changed form file - ( .Designer InitializeComponent )

Question

Using Suversion and WinDiff its no problem to branch / merge class-projects and web-projects.

The only kind of project I can never merge are winform projects. The InitializeComponent method is always scrambled after only little changes.

Is there any good way to enable diff / merge for .Designer - files?

EDIT:

I used a 3 way diff like Bert suggested. It made thinks a lot more easy. But still Winform - files (.designer and .resx ) were not mergeable.

Answer 1

Windiff was designed for comparing files. It uses a 2 way diff merge algorithm, that only allows you to see changes between two versions of a file, so you just have to guess which changes should be applied to a result file.

For merging you should really look into using a 3 way diff algorithm/tool.

In a 3 way diff the diff tool uses the original version of a file to extract the changes of your file (%mine) against the origin (%base) and their file (%theirs) against the origin and then applies all changes to the original version to create a single result. (And if there are any conflicts i

A very user friendly 3 way GUI diff tool that you can use for free is SourceGear DiffMerge (Recommended), but TortoiseMerge also implements a 3 way merge.

You can find a list of other common merge tools on Wikipedia.

Answer 2

We have a different method of ensuring that diffs are a bit more managable. We have a trigger on checkin that will modify the designer files InitializeComponent section into a consistent and ordered manner, so that diffs show the real changes.

we want to split InitializeComponent into 4 sections - creation, layout suspension, setup and layout resuming. Each of these sections are then separately ordered according to the names of the controls.

Answer 3

If you are using Resharper, reformat (including sorting members and whatever) those files before checking in.