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Re: Feature request "Shift compare"

From: Simon Large <simon.tortoisesvn_at_googlemail.com>
Date: 2007-10-16 16:48:40 CEST

On 16/10/2007, Stefan.Fuhrmann@etas.de <Stefan.Fuhrmann@etas.de> wrote:
> "Alexander Klenin" <klenin@gmail.com> wrote on 10.10.2007 04:24:22:
>
> > I started a long reply to Stefan^2 yesterday, but was unable to send it
> > due to electricity blackout (sadly, this is still common in Russia).
>
> Myself being raised on the "darker side of the Iron Curtain",
> I deeply sympathize with you ;)
>
> > On 10/9/07, Stefan.Fuhrmann@etas.de <Stefan.Fuhrmann@etas.de> wrote:
> > > My question: Is this still true or do we plan to make TortoiseMerge
> > > a full-blown bells-and-whistles merge tool?
> > Why not? It is certainly not a weak one already, and it is fun to work
> in it.
>
> I'm not against it and "fun" is, in itself, a sufficient reason
> to do it (at least in my book).
>
> Maybe we are at the point where most essential features have been
> implemented into SVN /TSVN. It seems to me that this is the right
> point to start "attacking" and finally "beating" other CM systems
> in terms of
>
> * performance (total time to get things done),
> * simplicity (becomes an important factor as feature count goes
> up)
> * look / user experience (e.g. "merge tool" is a plus for
> ClearCase)
>
> In other words: great, smoothly integrated tools.
>
> > > > * BeyondCompare for diffs
> > > > - great folder tree scanning, filtering, comparison, sync.
> > > > (not used by TSVN but the reason I have that tool at all)
> > >
> > > TSVN doesn't need that. And there's no way to start a diff tool with
> > > folders as parameters.
> > I disagree here.
> > TMerge can be easily started this way -- just select two folders in
> explorer,
> > and choose 'SVN Diff' from context menu.
> > It even errors out with 'TortoiseMerge can't diff directories.'
> > So I would say it is a missing feature, but not an important one, for
> > me at least.
>
> Correctly. Also, one might imagine TortoiseMerge to be used for
> interactive "svn merge" of whole folders. If we should get that
> to work smoothly, users may become less afraid of that "merge"
> problem they did not have in SourceSafe.
>
> > > > * Araxis Merge for merges
> > > > - great auto-merge (many conflicts are just resolved "the right
> way")
> > Interesting. Have you any idea about the algorithms involved?
>
> No, that is just an observation (Araxis Merge is a commercial tool):
> Click on the "merge" button and most conflicts are gone. Perhaps,
> svn is more conservative about what it considers a conflict while
> Araxis Merge may know about source code in an abstract way and
> will let the user (compiler) find the 0.x percent that go wrong.
>
> For TortoiseMerge that means we could device specific merge strategies
> for certain file types and / or different "aggression" levels.
>
> > > I wouldn't mind to have TSVN allow the user to choose between two (or
> > > maybe three, but not more) diff/merge tools from the context menu.
> > I agree that this is desirable.
> >
> > > But configuring is up to the user. Because if we try to do that
> > > automatically, we invite big trouble:
> > > * users complaining about us missing their favorite tool
> > > * different versions of the tools using different params
> > > * tools configured wrong which makes them not show everything without
> > > the user knowing
> >
> > How about contrib\ext_diff_examples.txt file, documenting the commands
> > to invoke various external tools, with a clear text stating those are
> > just examples and require modification according to user's local
> configuration?
> >
> > This way the only users affected will be those ones who actually do read
> > documentation and make an effort to manually copy-and-paste examples.
> > Hopefully, we will thus avoid the silliest complaints.
>
> That is an excellent proposal. If we could add an "examples for
> common tools" link to that file in current tool tip bubble, my
> problem would be perfectly solved. Maybe there should also be a
> note about that link in the manual.

The manual already includes parameters to pass to ExamDiff Pro,
KDiff3, WinMerge, Perforce Merge and Araxis. Feel free to add more :-)

Simon

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Received on Tue Oct 16 16:48:47 2007

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