Programmer API Accessibility trough COM/Other means

[Arjang]

Hello

Is it possible to access BC trough API/COM, create file comparison view and hook on to the events?

This would open up a world of new uses for embedding BC in other applications and makes it easy possible for others to contribute to BC

Regards

Arjang

[Aaron]

Hello,

The short answer is no, however BC4 supports a wide variety of methods to plug in other applications including:
Open With, File Format External Conversions, and the External File Format type.
While also including a variety of command line options when called from another application, including /qc and scripting. This is covered in more detail in the Help file -> Command Line Reference chapter and the Using Beyond Compare -> Scripting chapters.

What type of integration were you hoping to perform? We may already have some tools to help support it.

[Arjang]

Hello Aaron,

In short What you have with BC is (at least) two extremely useful components, for what I want currently is possible by the what there is now (Having differences tab as a window to stay open and change as I browse over the files list, I need to get the changed files and start BC and close it, in short it is possible but a dirty solution) .

Instead if you have the File List and Changes windows as two com components with events , it will become easy to host each one separately in another application (C#, Delphi, etc. ) , be notified of their events and manage their interaction in innumerable ways.

Have the BC broken up into COM components would allow 3rd party developers to interact with each component separately, manage the interaction between components and also come up with scenarios of use that could not possibly be foreseen before hand.

And all the while you keep working on BC components, as a side benefit you get contributions of usage of BC in other applications, that type of usage would add additional requirements for each components instead of just a feature in BC, having done similar work in having a hosting application with viewers I can say that the possibilities of usage will increase combinatorialy (not exponentially ).

In Delphi , turning apps into COMcomponents was easy, in C# I have found it to be the same, I be more than happy to help.

Regards

Arjang

[Aaron]

I'll add this idea to the customer wishlist, but it is not likely a project we'll be able to tackle soon.