Jan
14
Are they the same, or not?
Filed Under tools |
I use Dreamweaver all day long, and if you use it and you’ve ever gotten a synchronization notice, you may have seen a button that allows you to compare files. This is a fantastic feature, however, recently my BeyondCompare trial timed out. There’s no budget to purchase it - even though its under $50. So I asked around, and a co-worker mentioned an open source project called WinMerge.
This tool is a fantastic find. Granted it isn’t as feature rich as BeyondCompare, but really, I just want to see the differences in files. Sometimes its just a space that I don’t care about, something minor that trips up the synch algorithm or sometimes an actual code difference I didn’t remember. Its saved my bacon many times.
I would highly recommend using this open source tool if you don’t have a file compare utility defined in Dreamweaver. After installing it, simply go to : Edit | Preferences | File Compare and enter the path (for me that was : C:\Program Files\WinMerge\WinMergeU.exe)
You can also compare local files in a site if you select them both in the Files pallet, right click and choose compare files. This is great if you have Copy[5] of process.php and want to see what’s different in Copy[2] of process.php or even process.php 