3-way Folder Compare?

[bcdewul]

Bad luck...

Me too, I want to compare the subfolders in 1 root-folder with backup 2 destination-folders and want to see what folders are the same, in which case I can delete the root subfolders (donot need three folders, 2 backups are sufficient)
=

[jnpatelx]

what BC team is doing, when world is in outside earth space.
I mean, they are not able to provide 3 way folder compare while all others are.
:-P

[banzaimonkey]

Hey Team Scooter,

I wanted to provide a use-case for the three-way folder compare / merge feature.

I recently performed an extensive three-way merge between three versions of vbulletin in order to backport security fixes in a newer version of vbulletin core into an older, customized vbulletin codebase.

For a sense of scope, the codebase has 1200+ files, and the diff for the patch included around 16000 changed lines in 380 fies. I accomplished this over a few days (and several diffing sessions) using Araxis 3-way folder compare on Mac.

Let's call the three versions mainline (our production branch), vb-old (the original release) and vb-new (the new release with security fixes). vb-old and vb-new came from the vendor as zip files, while mainline is in git.

My basic workflow was:

1. Place each version of the codebase in its own folder.
2. Open all three folders in a three-way comparison.
3. Let the diff tool find differences between the files.
4. Identify differences between the files that followed a pattern and procedurally normalize these so I can focus on real changes. For example, CVS comments, version numbers, license keys, etc. were all embedded in the source code files. I stripped or automatically replaced them.
5. Let the diff tool find differences between the files after the automatic updates are applied.
6. Manually diff the remaining files.

The manual diff process looked like this:

- If vb-old and mainline are the same and vb-new is different, I apply the changes from vb-new to mainline and to vb-old so the diff doesn't recur.
- If vb-old and vb-new are the same and mainline is different, I keep the changes in mainline as they are and apply the changes to vb-old and vb-new so the diff doesn't recur.
- If vb-old, vb-new, and mainline are all different, I mark the file to come back to later.

In the first two cases, I'm not merging into a distinct 4th version of the file. I'm basically just syncing the changes between three "branches" of the codebase. I suppose if I had a way to mark a file in a diff as ("I've looked at this one already") it would be helpful, provided that could be persisted between sessions.

Once I narrowed down which files had been customized and needed security updates, I'd examine the file history (git blame / git log) in order to see why we'd made changes to the files, and then I'd manually incorporate the security fixes into our customizations.

When I was happy with all of the changes in mainline, I git-diffed the patched mainline against the previous version in git so I could review / double-check each of the changes going in.

Cheers,

Chris

[Aaron]

Thanks for the detailed example. We use vBulletin ourselves, and are familiar with this need. A 3-way Folder Merge is still on our radar, but we don't have any news or updates at this time.

[getsim]

it's 2013, 5 years still no here????

[Chris]

We plan to include 3-way folder merge in Beyond Compare 4, although version 4 doesn't have a release date set yet.

[gcol]

as a feedback, this missing feature will make me buy a competing product instead of beyond compare

[dhempy]

This post will be something a little different than just another "Bump," I hope.

Please DO NOT try to perfect this feature request and cover all the bases, and perfect the likely challenging folder merge functionality. We've been waiting five years for that, apparently.

Please DO take the bread-and-butter folder compare functionality that is the heart and soul of Beyond Compare and simply give us n-way panes in that interface. That is 95% of what I need, and I suspect most users in this thread are in a similar situation. If I had only "Copy to pane" and "copy to all panes" functionality, without all the fancier suggestions in this thread, I would be a happy camper.

I currently have a project that has three variant live servers, one staging environment, all four with a local development copies. None of these are not clones, so copying sets of files is a manual process. I have a workspace with eight tabs to manage those copies, and it is cumbersome and not difficult to miss files. Having an eight-way compare would save me an hour a day. Even having a three-way compare would be helpful.

This is my first post here, but I've been watching this thread for several years. This sounds like a no-brainer to add to such a great product.

If there is something else blocking this feature (I suspect patent infringement, licensing obstacles, etc.), it would give us some relief to know that, instead of simply sitting here wondering how this profound feature request and years of, "we're actively working on it," could not bring it to market.

FWIW, we are a long-time multi-seat user of Beyond Compare Pro. I cannot count how many people I've recommended your product to...and will continue to do so.

Thanks for your attention,
-dave