Diff And Patch

From Valve Developer Community

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Diff Tools

Diff tools can be extremely useful when working on large projects, especially when sharing code between several programmers without the aid of a revision control system such as CVS or Perforce. These tools make it possible to track changes betwen two different versions of a mod, and are even capable of seamlessly merging two different mods.

Yet another use is to examine changes on the SDK tree after a update, in addition to reading the changelog.

Alienbrain
  • A groupware framework for game developing, includes a good diff tool.
  • AlienBrain (http://www.alienbrain.com)
Beyond Compare
  • An excellent text comparison tool.
  • Scooter Software (http://www.scootersoftware.com/)
Cygwin
  • A POSIX layer for Windows which includes many popular GNU tools such as GCC (GNU Compiler Collection), GNU Patch, etc.
  • Cygwin (http://www.cygwin.com)
Meld
  • Meld is a visual diff and merge tool. It integrates especially well with CVS. The diff viewer lets you edit files in place (diffs update dynamically), and a middle column shows detailed changes and allows merges. Gnome app.
  • Meld (http://meld.sourceforge.net/)
Winmerge
  • A Windows tool for examining differences between two set of files.
  • Winmerge (http://winmerge.sf.net)

You can read more about how diff software works here:

  • Diff Utils (http://www.gnu.org/software/diffutils/diffutils.html)
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