Changes: File Comparison Meets Nice Interface
If you ever have to work with a team on some code or a paper, you know how important it is to be on the same page as everyone. You need to know what your partners did, so you can approve. This is why things like Microsoft Word, and Pages have text change trackers. But what if you don’t want to open your word processor every time you need to approve? Or if you don’t even have one of those or they don’t support the file format you are working with? Well, that is where Changes comes in.
Included with the Apple Developer Tools is a file comparison app called FileMerge. It works, but it looks and feels outdated. Before I found Changes, I used that. Since using Changes, I have never looked back though. Changes is the first app to bring a nice interface to a file comparison app (for Mac). But, its not just a pretty interface, it performs amazingly and carries many nice features too.
The first and most important way that it differs from an app like FileMerge is its built in SFTP support. This means you can see changes between files on and off your hard drive. All you have to do is click Connect, set up your SFTP, and you’re off! This is extremely helpful because usually when you’re doing a collaborative project, the main file will be on a server. However, all Changes is really doing is mounting the server in the Finder. Because it is just mounting in Finder, it would be nice if it supported a few more types of servers.
To compare two files, you can do one of two things. You can drag each file onto the Original and Modified boxes. Or you can click on either the Original or Modified button, and choose your files. Then you just hit Compare, and you’re off!
The comparing interface of Changes is extremely easy to use. You can choose to see only the differences or everything from the toolbar. You can also go from difference to difference by clicking Next and Pervious Diff. When you want to commit a change from one side, you just hit the Merge toolbar item that corresponds with what you want to do. You can even refresh the files (in case you edited one of the files while this window was open), by hitting Refresh.
The last two features I would like to tell you about are the TextMate, BBEdit, TextWrangler, and Terminal support. All of these let you compare files from within the application. Instead of having to open Changes, you can do it from right inside the app! To use any of these, you have to have the Terminal Support installed too.
As you may have been able to tell, Changes is very simple to use, but yet, it is not feature deprived. It has everything you would expect from a file comparison app, and then some! It even works with subversion! It’s price point is its only minor problem. It costs $39.95, so some of you may be turned off by that. With the price aside, Changes is a great app, and even with the price, you may find it very useful.
For sure a nice and polished app, the developer invested some significant time into.
But where is the value added feature in comparasion to FileMerge (besides the SFTP “support”)?
A nice app I bought with the “Give good food to your Mac” operation. The added value is for me, in the folder comparison.
I’ve been a fan of Araxis Merge for years (since 2001), it has helped me on numerous occasions.
It’s an expensive piece of software, but the first time that you need to compare three directory structures across three machines, the investment pays for itself
Save yourself forty bucks with the tools you already have in OS X: open Terminal and type cmp
SYNTAX
cmp [-l | -s] file1 file2 [skip1 [skip2]]
Options
-l Print the byte number (decimal) and the differing byte values (octal)
for each difference.
-s Print nothing for differing files; return exit status only.
Thank you and goodnight. I’ll be here all year showing up ripoff merchants who take the software you already bought, slap a pretty gui on it, and charge you money.
Why not just use KDiff3 for mac?
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=58666