Re: [PATCH] TortoiseMerge: report if files are identical and optionally exit

Flavio Stanchina wrote:
> Hello list,
> this is my first message to the list and first patch to TortoiseSVN, so
> forgive me if I'm doing something wrong.
>
> We've migrated to Subversion+TortoiseSVN from Visual SourceSafe; one of
> my boss' complaints was that the VSS "diff" command would report if the
> files are identical and just exit, so I implemented it in TortoiseMerge.
> The message box is not optional because I didn't feel like touching the
> options dialog box and related stuff, but I think there should be a
> check box for this. The "exit if identical" behavior is controlled by
> the /x command-line switch that I copied from WinMerge; I don't think a
> GUI option is needed for that, as it's something that is mostly useful
> when invoked from other programs.

First, thanks for the patch.

I'm not sure if that 'feature' is really something useful. I always
thought it annoying having a dialog box popping up to tell me that the
files are identical. Even if they are, I still like to sometimes browse
through the files - that spares me from opening the file(s) again in a
text editor.

Also, the dialog box might tell you a lie: if TortoiseMerge is
configured to ignore whitespaces/lineendings/..., then you won't get
'diffs' but the files are still not identical!

> I also added a DiffData::GetChanges() method that returns the number of
> changes. I'm not sure if this is the way to do it, but I couldn't find a
> quick way to tell if there are differences or not and I thought that
> this might be useful.

You could simply use the variables which are used to indicate the number
of added/deleted/conflicted lines in the status bar. If they're not
zero, there are differences shown.

> If you like the idea but have issues with the actual implementation,
> feel free to make comments. I'm willing to fix things and revise the
> implementation to get it accepted.

I think we either should add (yet) another option for this or at least
use a dialog which has the "don't show this again" checkbox
(SHMessageBoxCheck).

What do others think about such a feature?

Stefan

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