Best Free GUI Diff Tools

xxdiff – graphical file and directories comparator and merge tool

xxdiff is an open source graphical file and directories comparator and merge tool.

xxdiff can be used for viewing the differences between two or three files, or two directories, and can be used to produce a merged version. The texts of the two or three files are presented side by side with their differences highlighted with colors for easy identification.

This program is an essential software development tool that can be used to visualize the differences between files or directories, merge files with differences, resolving conflicts and saving output to a new file or patch, and assist file changes reviewing and comment production (e.g. approving source code changes before they get merged into a source tree).

Key Features

  • Compare two files, three files, or two directories (shallow and recursive).
  • Horizontal diffs highlighting – compute the diffs between pairs of matching lines, i.e. horizontal diffs. The differing parts are highlighted with a brighter color.
  • Files can be merged interactively and resulting output visualized and saved.
  • Features to assist in performing merge reviews/policing.
  • Unmerge CVS conflicts in automatically merged file and display them as two files, to help resolve conflicts.
  • Uses external diff program to compute differences: works with GNU diff, SGI diff and ClearCase’s cleardiff, and any other diff whose output is similar to those.
  • Fully customizable with a resource file.
  • Look-and-feel similar to Rudy Wortel’s/SGI xdiff, it is desktop agnostic.
  • Features and output that ease integration with scripts.

Website: urius.ca/xxdiff
Support: GitHub Code Repository
Developer: Martin Blais
License: GNU General Public License v2.0

xxdiff
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xxdiff is written in C++ and Python. Learn C++ with our recommended free books and free tutorials. Learn Python with our recommended free books and free tutorials.


Related Software

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KompareKDE diff tool supporting a variety of diff formats
DiffuseTool for merging and comparing text files
TkDiffGraphical front end to the diff program
objdiffLocal diffing tool for decompilation project
KDiff3Text difference analyzer for up to 3 input files
xxdiffFile and directories comparator and merge tool
RustDiffSemantic JSON and XML diff tool
RCompareFile and directory comparison toolkit
Text CompareCompare old and new text
jdDiffBasic cross platform diff viewer
DiffPDFCompare two PDF files

Read our verdict in the software roundup.


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