Team Foundation Server (TFS) File Difference viewer - customize with other tool

Question

I am using Team Foundation Server (TFS) for Visual Studio 2005.

Whenever i wish to compare two file's versions TFS displays a window with the differences.

The problem is that it is always split vertically.

In fact, almost every time, i would prefer to have it split horizontally. I've already looked at TFS options and googled but i found nothing. I'm appalled to think that such option is not available!

Is there any way to configure TFS to split it horizontally?

Solution 1

I've found the built in differencing tool in TFS woefully lacking so I set up WinMerge (http://www.winmerge.org/) in my environment in Tools -> Options -> Source COntrol -> Visual Studio Team Foundation.

A nice blog post exists below:

http://www.vitalygorn.com/blog/post/2007/12/Better-DiffMerge-tool-for-TFS.aspx

Solution 2

There is no ability to change the orientation of the built-in diff/merge utility. There are a lot of third-party tools (some free, some not) to choose from. Check out this post from James Manning where he tracks the correct command/argument values to use when configuring various tools for use by Team Foundation's compare and (content) merge operations.

Solution 3

This appears to be a more thorough description of how to use Winmerge in TFS- http://www.neovolve.com/post/2007/06/19/using-winmerge-with-tfs.aspx

Comments

[Ray]

Here is another nice detailed blog showing how to setup and use WinMerge in VS: blog.paulbouwer.com/2010/01/31/…

[Luis Filipe]

Thank you for your contribution

[steinar]

The link in the answer is broken, but @RayVega's link worked for me.

[palswim]

I posted this answer because the other answers just contained links to the content.