WinMerge

WinMerge 2.8.6 Release Notes

• About This Release
• What Is New in 2.8.6?
• What Is New in 2.8.4?
• What Is New in 2.8.2?
• What Is New in 2.8.0?
• What Is New in 2.8 RC?
• What Is New in 2.7.6?
• What Is New in 2.7.4?
• What Is New in 2.7.2?
• Known Issues

August 2008

About This Release

This is a new WinMerge stable release which is recommended and replaces earlier 2.6.x versions.

Compared to the 2.6.x releases, there are many improvements beneficial to the usage of WinMerge. Some areas of improvement include: Improved UTF-8 file detection and opening of binary files. Another significant improvement is the new localization system. This simplifies the translation process of WinMerge.

Please submit bug reports to our bug-tracker.

What Is New in 2.8.6?

For a complete changelog history, see the ChangeLog.txt file located in the Docs folder under the WinMerge program folder.

Changes

• Fix for moving protected (read-only) items in folder compare
• Fix external editor command line switches
• Fix wrong text in copy confirmation dialog
• New Slovenian translation
• Chinese Traditional translation update

What Is New in 2.8.4?

Changes

• Fix a crash when one path given from command line
• Fix a crash when starting second instance with single-instance enabled
• Brazilian translation update

What Is New in 2.8.2?

Changes

• Make 'Yes' the default button in copy confirmation dialog
• Command line parsing fixes
• Fix showing differences in the end of the line
• Manual and documentation updates

Translations

Several translations were updated and three new translations were added:

• Greek
• Romanian
• Ukrainian

What Is New in 2.8.0?

Changes

• Installer and splash screen graphics updates
• Manual and documentation updates
• Translation updates

What Is New in 2.8 RC?

Detect UTF-8 Files Without BOM Bytes

Until now, WinMerge could not detect UTF-8 files without a BOM (Byte-order) marker. Opening such files with WinMerge caused segments of the file(s) to render improperly on the screen. UTF-8 files without BOM bytes are now properly detected and displayed.

Open Binary Files

WinMerge could not display files it detected as binary in previous versions. WinMerge did however compare the files and returned the results as either "binary files are identical" or "binary files are different." Starting with this release, WinMerge now shows all files in the file compare, including binary files. Bytes that have no visual representation (character) are displayed with its byte value.

NOTE: WinMerge is not a binary file editor. Do not damage your binary files!

Resolve Conflict Files

The oldest open feature request has finally been implented! WinMerge can now open "conflict files" that several version control systems (CVS, Subversion, etc.) output. A conflict file is seperated into two files?"theirs" and "mine." These files are then displayed for typical file compare and merging.

Other Changes

• Syntax highlighting for PowerShell and PO(T) files.
• Zooming in file compare.
• Create a pair folder for a unique folder so browsing into that folder is possible.
• Option to select a folder for temporary files.
• Show the file's encoding type in the file compare status bar.
• Option to preserve a file's modification date in file compare.

Important Bugs Fixed

• Right mouse button did not move the cursor to the new position in file compare
• Merge/Delete would delete files from folders marked as read-only.
• Potential lockup in folder compare.
• Line filter did not filter non-ascii lines correctly.
• Did not switch back to content compare once switched to quick compare in folder compare.
• Quick compare did not ignore EOL differences.

What Is New in 2.7.6?

New Localization System

The most significant change in this release is the new localization system. This new system is based on the widely used PO files. PO files are text files that have both the original (English) text and the translated text together. Since PO files are text files, they are simple and intuitive to edit. WinMerge no longer uses DLL resources for translations and therefore, no compiling will ever be required. One can now edit the PO files on-the-fly, re-start WinMerge, and the changes will be reflected immediately.

See WinMerge web site for more information about translations: http://winmerge.org/translations/

In conclusion: PO files have replaced LANG files in Languages-subfolder.

Translations

Several translations were again updated. We expect things to improve with translation statuses, as the new system is so much easier to use.

New Croatian and Portuguese translations were added.

Other Changes

• HTML reports from file compare
• Improved printing
• New dialog for selecting folder compare columns
• New icon for Shell Integration

Important Bugs Fixed

• Rename in folder compare misbehaved when renaming an item that only existed on one side.
• "Do not merge" ignored differences when multiple differences are selected
• VCS system integration tried to check out the wrong file, this caused a variety of side-effects.
• Backup file was created from the wrong file in folder compare operations

What Is New in 2.7.4?

• New confirmation dialog for copying items in folder compare.
• Improved line filter -dialog.
• Printing improvements.
• Allow user to select syntax highlighting to use for a file.
• Tabbed multi-window interface.
• Alternative big toolba.r
• Recent project files in File-menu.

Important Bugs Fixed

• Crash when comparing empty folders.
• Pressing ESC-key when renaming a file caused a crash.

What Is New in 2.7.2?

• New XML (expat+scew) and regular expression (PCRE) libraries used.
• Try to match files inside differences.
• Optimized folder compare.
• New options for creating backup files.

Important Bugs Fixed

• Crash occures when file modification time was missing.
• Dialogs could be hidden behind other windows.
• Many word-wrap related fixes.

Known Issues

• 7-zip installed from MSI installer may not work with WinMerge.

  Workaround: Use the EXE installer of 7-Zip. See manual 4.5. 7-Zip and Archive Support for more information.

• Old IE version can cause crashes when handling archive files.

  Workaround: If WinMerge crashes when handling archives, consider updating IE to version 6.0 or later.

• Supercopier application causes WinMerge to hang.

  Supercopier application causes WinMerge to not exit properly and leaves WinMerge process hang. See the bug reports:

  • #1976241 the winmerge.exe process doesn't stop itself
  • #1602313 WinMerge stays in tasklist after closing

  Workaround: Disable the Supercopier when using WinMerge.

• There is no way to specify the codepage for a particular file.

  Workaround: Specify the default codepages for all files in Edit->Options->Codepage->Custom codepage.

• There is no 3-way merge. #990464

• Filters only applied when using full compare.

  Line filtering is only applied in folder compare when using Full Contents-compare method.

  If you are using any other compare method, line filters are not applied. Files marked different in folder compare can get status changed to identical when opening them to file compare.

• Some plugins shipped with WinMerge require Visual Basic runtime library to work

  Workaround: You can download the required file msvbvm60.dll or use the Run-Time Redistribution Pack from Microsoft.

  Workaround 2: If you don't need the plugin, you can safely remove it.

• VSS integration cannot add new files to VSS

  If you need to add a new file, you must add it via VSS client program.

• Unset WinMerge integration from ClearCase

  To remove WinMerge integration, you'll need to edit one file by hand:

  1. Find ClearCase installation folder
     Usually it is something like C:\Program Files\Rational\ClearCase
  2. Go to subfolder lib\mgrs\
  3. Open file map in there to editor program
  4. Comment-out the line starting with "text_file_delta xcompare", containing "WinMergeU.exe"
  5. Uncomment the line starting with "text_file_delta xcompare", containing "cleardiffmrg.exe"