[DUG] Source Control - Sharing files between projects

[Paul Heinz]

Jeremy wrote: 

> I've blogged about it before but I really like BeyondCompare. 
> The upcoming version 3 sounds very promising on the merge 
> front and 3 way compares.
> 
> I expect both have trials.

Yes, for a two-way tool Beyond Compare is really nice and we use it
in-house too by our support staff with normal diff and compare stuff.
But it's lack of powerful three-way compare/merge support ruled it out
for my use with Perforce when I was comparing it and Araxis.

It sounds like Beyond Compare may finally get some good 3-way support, I
seem to remember the developer has been talking about it for a while.
(Beyond Compare is written in Delphi I believe). It might be good, but
then Araxis has been doing the 3-way dance for some time and it shows.

There was another 3-way tool (the name escapes me - it was 5 or so years
ago :-) I saw that looked powerful, but it was written in Java to be
portable and the UI (Swing I think) was pretty clunky and had weak
keyboard handling, so Araxis being Win32 native won the day. I seem to
remember it comes bundled with SurroundSCM as their merge tool.

Perforce hasn't focussed on shipping a best of breed merge/compare tools
- which is not to say their tool doesn't work - it's just not a primary
focus. Instead, they tend to focus on their knitting (the core SCM
engine) and let the market and customer decide which 3rd party tools
they prefer.

TTFN,
  Paul.