Multi-format diffing made easy!

This tool is primarily intended to be used in combination with version control software such as WinCvs or TortoiseCVS, which allow you to specify an external Diff application to view differences between revisions or to review changes to documents before commit. However, not all types of files can be sensibly compared using one and the same tool, e.g. it doesn't make a lot of sense to compare two revisions of an image file or a (binary) Word document using your default text differ. Furthermore, some Diff tools might require additional arguments to be passed on the commandline or they may expect the file names to be passed in a different order than provided by the version control tool.

ProxyDiff acts as a mediator between the version control software and the external diff application(s). Using a simple .ini-file it allows you to configure any number of diff tools and associate them with file types by extension. Optionally you can also specify how arguments should be passed. Yet another option is to define that the user should be able to choose between a specific Diff application and the default application.

Feature Overview

transparently use multiple diff applications based on file type
extend diff commandline with custom arguments
group file type associations into "classes", i.e. you don't have to repeat the same app definition again and again for *.htm, *.html, *.shtml, *.xhtml, etc.
make use of specialized diff application optional: on invocation the user could be prompted whether to use the specialized or the default differ

Installation

Using the installer

Run the ProxyDiff-###-setup.exe from the downloaded archive.
Note that the automatic WinCvs or TortoiseCvs integration will only apply to the user account you run the installer under. Thus, if you want to use that feature, you have to run the installer using the account under which you typically run those applications.
Follow the instructions on screen.

Manual installation

Unpack downloaded file to destination folder, e.g. c:\Program Files\ProxyDiff
Adjust ProxyDiff.ini file to your needs (see comments inside)
Configure your version control frontend to use ProxyDiff.exe as the External Diff application, e.g. in WinCvs go to the WinCvs tab of the Admin|Preferences dialog.