TortoiseSVN/TortoiseMerge - Diff XML files ignoring irrelevant differences

When differencing some file-types, eg XML, whitespace and some details of the syntax don’t actually mean a significant difference. Two XML files might appear from a straightforward text diff to be quite different, but to an XML-aware differencer they could be the same.

On looking at XML files in TortoiseMerge I am seeing these irrelevant differences and it is making it very difficult to spot real changes, either to plan my commit, or to do a merge.

I have come fairly recently to Subversion and TortoiseSvn and TortoieMerge, having used CVSNT/CVS Suite for many years. With CVSNT I’ve used WinMerge for showing differences. WinMerge comes with some filters to normalize irrelevant differences between files so this issue can be worked around (though the filters do prevent these file-types being merged).

Is there a feature for doing this within TortoiseSvn/TortoiseMerge ?
I notice that there is some filetype specific selection of differencing that is used for MS Word files, for example. I’ve found the “Advanced diff settings” page where plugins are configured for Word/Excel etc but there is no sign of anything provided for XML.

Is there anything built-in to ToitoiseSvn or TortoiseMerge that I’m missing ? Or any existing plug-in that I might consider using ?

Regards,
Richard.

Richard Kerry
BNCS Engineer, SI SOL Telco & Media Vertical Practice

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