Comments on: Why use diffxml?

By: Adrian Mouat

Adrian Mouat — Sat, 08 May 2010 20:55:01 +0000

Hi Mark,

Sorry for the slow reply, for some reason WP marked you as spam.

You are right about context matching. I want to get the basics working properly first though!

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 00:45:14 +0000

Interesting, but one big problem, no context checking. A standard diff tool checks to make sure the change is really what the patch is, it doesn’t just say “change line three” it says “change the line that comes after these three lines, and before these three lines”. That way if the original file has changed in some non-relevant way ( a few lines added or removed else where), the patch should still work, and if the patch is on top of something else that’s also changed, you can detect the conflict.

For instance, I’ve got a project which has xml docs that we then need to update in “customize” releases. However, as the base project moves along, the original xml doc changes. I could generate a diff (between the orginal and customized version of the xml doc) with your tool, but the instant I added/removed elements from the root doc, the patch would start modify/deleting the wrong elements.

By: Senthil

Senthil — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 19:04:02 +0000

Please, we absolutely need a GUI interface for this. Awesome tool!

By: Adrian Mouat

Adrian Mouat — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 16:48:33 +0000

I’m not 100% sure what you mean, but I think the answer is yes.

They are command line utilities, so it’s dead simple to create a wrapper script or something. You could also directly axis the Java classes, but that’s a little more work (and remember that they are GPL licensed).

By: Brian spencer

Brian spencer — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 09:27:34 +0000

I have just seen this utility and following a company project based on this. Its undoubtly an easy resolution but can we automate the process or comparing two xml files thru this tool? I have been asked this question and looking for an answer. So that we can include diffxml in our projects.

Thanks

By: Adrian Mouat

Adrian Mouat — Thu, 21 May 2009 17:59:30 +0000

Not at the minute, but it’s sounds like a useful idea – I’ll add it to the list of wanted features.

The main focus at the moment is getting the quality right; in the current version you can still expect to run into the odd bug.

By: John Knottenbelt

John Knottenbelt — Wed, 20 May 2009 21:07:26 +0000

Excellent stuff! Visual Studio project (.vcproj) and solution (.sln) files are XML and I frequently get problems with merging in changes using the TortoiseMerge (which is very good, but line-based).

Is it possible to use diffxml as a custom diff / merge tool with TortoiseSVN?