Beyond Compare features I'd like to have in EDPro

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Alexo
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Beyond Compare features I'd like to have in EDPro

Post by Alexo »

Having recently started a new job, I asked IT to install EDPro on my machine. Unfortunately they declined, saying that they have Beyond Compare on the list of pre-approved applications and don't want to support yet another diff program.

Oh well.

After using BC for a couple of days, I still prefer EDPro, but they do have several "killer" features that I would love to see in EDPro.

1) BC has a Linux version. This is actually very helpful, as a lot of my work is done on a Linux VM, and being able to use the program without copying the files to the Windows host is a time saver. The fact that I can use the same license for as many machines/VMs as I want as long as I am the only user helps. I know that porting is difficult but it would be a great feature to have.

2) I am used to inline editing, but I was pleasantly surprised when BC dynamically re-compared the files without the need for a refresh. It felt instantaneous, so I suspect that maybe it didn't re-compare the whole file. A nice feature to have.

3) Table comparison. This too caught me by surprise when I tried to compare two CSV files and got a nice table format (I found an example of what it looks like on the BC site here). EDPro already supports resizable columns in its directory comparison panel, so it should not be too difficult to implement.

4) Background operations. Yes, please! it can take a very long time to compare large nested folders, especially on slow storage or over the network, and I would love to be able to dig into file differences before all files finish comparing instead of staring at a progress bar that doesn't move with an unresponsive cancel button. In fact, in this day and age there is no excuse to only use a single thread for the heavy lifting on highly parallelizable tasks. The CPU of my 9 (nine!) years old desktop has 4 hyper-threaded cores, and current AMD processors boast 6-16 cores (12-32 threads).

Best regards,
Alex
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Re: Beyond Compare features I'd like to have in EDPro

Post by psguru »

Thank you for your suggestions. We are always looking into ways to improve ExamDiff Pro, and we will take into consideration all of the features mentioned. That said, some features are unlikely to make it into ExamDiff Pro anytime soon - in particular, porting to Linux would be very difficult given ExamDiff Pro's current architecture.
4) Background operations. Yes, please! it can take a very long time to compare large nested folders, especially on slow storage or over the network, and I would love to be able to dig into file differences before all files finish comparing instead of staring at a progress bar that doesn't move with an unresponsive cancel button. In fact, in this day and age there is no excuse to only use a single thread for the heavy lifting on highly parallelizable tasks. The CPU of my 9 (nine!) years old desktop has 4 hyper-threaded cores, and current AMD processors boast 6-16 cores (12-32 threads).
In regards to background operations, have you tried enabling the Use parallel full comparison option under Options | Directory Comparison | Other? This option puts most of the directory comparison work into a background process, enabling you to interact with directory comparison results much faster. In our experience, enabling parallel full comparison speeds up the main thread about 3-5x while comparing large directories.
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Alexo
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Re: Beyond Compare features I'd like to have in EDPro

Post by Alexo »

psguru wrote: Fri Mar 19, 2021 10:59 am Thank you for your suggestions. We are always looking into ways to improve ExamDiff Pro, and we will take into consideration all of the features mentioned. That said, some features are unlikely to make it into ExamDiff Pro anytime soon - in particular, porting to Linux would be very difficult given ExamDiff Pro's current architecture.
If it runs under Wine, then it is not such a big deal.
psguru wrote: Fri Mar 19, 2021 10:59 am In regards to background operations, have you tried enabling the Use parallel full comparison option under Options | Directory Comparison | Other? This option puts most of the directory comparison work into a background process, enabling you to interact with directory comparison results much faster. In our experience, enabling parallel full comparison speeds up the main thread about 3-5x while comparing large directories.
Yes, I have it set.
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