Tools-BeyondCompare

BeyondCompare from Scooter Software goes back to Borland/Windows development days and provided a comparison tool for viewing C++ and Delphi projects where some of the files were compressed binary rather than readable text. BC2 provided direct access to compare and merge changes between versions without having to dump the files to text. For Borland developers it was one of those must have extensions to the IDE, and worth every penny of it's miniscule price. Initially a windows only package, since that was all the Borland tools ran on as well, the version 3 builds were ported to Linux and expanded the merge facilities to 3 way. Additional plug-in filters allow viewing of many more file formats than the original binary resource files.

The long pedigree of BeyondCompare has meant that it is now viewed as a standard, and other IDE tools such as Eclipse and TortoiseHg now support direct links to it to provide comparison and merge within those platforms. One element of BC which has always made it stand out from the integral compare tool in Eclipse is the full line display. The highlighted line is available to scroll horizontally in a secondary area below the main page display, so you can see the differences along a line a lot easier. In Eclipse it can sometimes be difficult to actually see the fine detail of a change on a line.