Beyond Compare as a merge tool for Team Foundation

[Guest]

Hi,

I configured BC as the diff tool for Team Foundation as described in the KB article.
I also configured it as the merge tool, but each time I close it, I get an error message saying "The manual merge for <file name> has been canceled".

Any ideas?

Thank You,
Shay

[Chris]

Re: Beyond Compare as a merge tool for Team Founda

I haven't heard reports of this error from any of our users yet. So far I've only heard from those using BC as a diff tool with Team Foundation, not as a merge tool.

What steps did you take to configure BC as a merge tool?

[shayc]

Re: Beyond Compare as a merge tool for Team Founda

Basically, its very similar to configuring BC as a diff tool.
In the "Configure Tool" dialog, I've entered the following:
Operation=Merge
Command=C:\Program Files\Beyond Compare\BC2.EXE
Arguments:%1 %2 /title1=%6 /title2=%7

BC is launched and performes the merge but when I close it it seems like the return value causes Team Foundation to display an error message and cancel the merge operation.

Thank You,
shay

[Chris]

Re: Beyond Compare as a merge tool for Team Founda

I found a good article on this at MSDN blogs:

http://blogs.msdn.com/jmanning/articles/535573.aspx

The variables %1 and %2 are only the files to compare. You'll need to specify %4 in the argument to BC as the file for saved changes. Without this, changes won't get saved to version control.

For merge, try using
Arguments:%1 %2 /savetarget=%4 /title1=%6 /title2=%7

This will make a save in the left or right pane save to filename %4.

[shayc]

Re: Beyond Compare as a merge tool for Team Founda

Thank you,
Worked like a charm...

Shay

[Guest]

Re: Beyond Compare as a merge tool for Team Founda

Thank you for this hint,

I wonder if it should not be included in the "official" list


Garpur

[Chris]

Re: Beyond Compare as a merge tool for Team Founda

Garpur,

Thanks for the suggestion. I added this to our Version Control page.

[ischyrus]

Which Version Control page are you guys referring to?

[Zoë]

Using BC with Version Control Systems

[ischyrus]

No good

I just switched to 3.0 and its not working with TFS2008 :-(

When I do merges it says that the merge has been canceled.

[Zoë]

ischyrus,

Have you updated your paths to the values showin in the version control knowledge base article? You you just swapped out "<Program Files>\Beyond Compare 2\BC2.exe" with "<Program Files>\Beyond Compare 3\BCompare.exe" you can run into trouble. Take a look at the article linked in the post just above yours.

[ischyrus]

My settings are exactly as described.

I even tried using both BComp.exe and BCompare.exe. I noticed when using the command "tf diff" it actually says that BCompare.exe returns a wierd exit code. I'm wondering if that has something to do with my issue.

For example: "The program C:\Program Files\Beyond Compare 3\BCompare.exe failed with exit code 13." I don'w know why it would do that over a diff.

[ischyrus]

*ping*

Has someone at SS verified this with TFS 08?

What would be causing and exit code 13 on a simple diff?

[Michael Bulgrien]

I've been using BC3 as my diff and merge engine for Visual Studio Team Foundation Server (both 2005 and 2008 editions) since April. The settings I use are described in this post. Using BCompare will certainly cause issues. Don't do it. Use BComp.exe instead.

[ischyrus]

Limited error level usage

This feature makes the product absolutely unusable. How can I disable this? The only time this error level should be anything but 0 is when I close the app with solving a conflict or not saving.

---

The following DOS Error Levels are set on exit:

0 Success
1 Binary Match
2 Rules-Based Match
11 Binary Difference
12 Similar
13 Rules-Based Difference
14 Conflicts Detected
100 Unknown error
101 Conflicts Detected. Merge output not written.

Beyond Compare also supports command lines from ClearCase automatically for interactive and silent comparisons and merges.