Beyond Compare and Bazaar VCS

[nekulturny]

I bought Beyond Compare to see if it could take the place of Araxis Merge, which I have been using at work for about 15 years, because I can't justify its cost for personal use. It's always challenging adjusting to a new tool but for the most part I have been able to find settings in Beyond Compare to make it work in a way that's compatible with the habits I've established. In some respects, Beyond Compare far outstrips the capabilities of Araxis Merge (if I'd known about it's table compare feature for example I would have bought it long ago for comparing CSV files). I like Beyond Compare! There are a couple of idiosyncrasies though that I'm finding difficult.

With Araxis Merge as my diff viewer in Bazaar, when I clicked the diff button on the qcommit window, Araxis would open if it was not already running and it would open each changed file in a new tab. That is the behaviour that makes sense to me and it's the behaviour I want.

I've tried a few things with Beyond Compare and none of them are ideal.

1. Using bcomp

If I use bcomp, Beyond Compare will open with a single file comparison in it. When I close that comparison it opens the next one. It doesn't make a difference if Beyond Compare is open beforehand or not. It always opens one comparison at a time and won't open the next until the first is closed. This is really annoying when many, many files have changed.

2. Using bcompare

If I use bcompare without having Beyond Compare already open, the behaviour is the same as using bcomp. The comparisons are opened serially.

If Beyond Compare is already running when I click the diff button and it's configured to use bcompare, it opens each comparison in a tab of the existing Beyond Compare window. This is very close to what I want, but not exactly, because:

a) If I forget to open Beyond Compare first, it opens the comparisons serially, and it is really annoying to have to close 60 windows in a row. I guess I could terminate the bcompare.exe process, but the tool is not working with me.

b) Sometimes when using bcompare, the "old" pane in the comparison window is empty and it says it could not find the file.

Is there a way to overcome these difficulties with Beyond Compare?

[Aaron]

Hello,

The intended/expected result is to use Bcomp.exe and to open the tabs one at a time. BComp.exe waits, which is usually needed to prevent the VCS from deleting the temp files viewed in the diff. If we return too quickly, then the temp files generated and viewed are then deleted by the VCS.

We don't have the ability to maintain this hold while also opening in additional tabs. It's on our wishlist to look into this, and Bazaar VCS might not require the hold like other VCS, but it's non-trivial to implement.

[nekulturny]

Thanks for your response, Aaron. It's disappointing, but if I get too annoyed by it I can write a little program to mediate between Bazaar and Beyond Compare and give me the behaviour I want.

I've been using Beyond Compare for a few weeks now and it's really, really good. The version of Araxis Merge we have at work is a few years old and maybe they've made progress in later releases, but Beyond Compare blows the doors off the version of Araxis Merge we have. You guys did a really good job.