Use the
Document / Comparsion/Merge / New Folder
Comparison (Ctrl+M) command to open an empty
Folder Comparison view or
Document / Comparsion/Merge / New Comparison...
(Ctrl+N) menu item to select the sources directories to use
and/or the options to apply to the new document. The
dialog box
allows you to open side-by-side or 3 way comparisons. You can
check the Merge option to start with the merge pane open.
Working with comparisons and merges
Each source folder is open and browsed in a usual tree view.
The columns widths are synchronized so you do not have to
resize them separately.
Differences
The differences are presented by using different background
colours for the modified files. These are either added, removed
or changed. You can define the colours in the
Options dialog
box. The status bar shows at any time the basic statistics
together with the colours.
Navigating in the folder hierarchy
You can move in files and folders by using arrows
and scrollbars.
Buttons
The Next and Previous difference buttons allow you to
browse the differences
The Next and Previous conflict buttons point you
directly to the conflicts, already solved or not
The Next and Previous Unresolved conflict buttons
browse only unresolved conflicts
Generic copy
Merge has a Generic Copy feature which allows many
simple operations in a few clicks (from both merge
and differentiation mode). This
Copy
feature allows you Copy, Mirror and Update (and many more
when combining the options).
Merge mode
Merge follows a set of rules which are defined: first, for
the whole document in the session options and second, for the
items that you select and "resolve" by hand. Depending on the
work that you want to realize different options will interest
you.
In order to help you to get your folders in the wanted
state, Merge combines several options:
output folders: only the folders that you
specified as output folders get updated, you have no risk
of data loss for your important directories
'other' folder: you can specify an
alternate folder as output whatever the job that you are
accomplishing, so that you can make some 'experiments' with
no risks for your valuable data
updates are "
retained": you first specify what you want
to do with an item and later validate the action, Merge
will show in the "Result" and "Remaining actions" columns
what will be done so that you won't get unexpected
results
cases classification: Merge classifies the
different situation with respect to differences, absence
and presence of the items so that you can act on them in a
discriminate way. For example, you can decide to keep the
most recent files for the files that cannot be merged while
let those that can be resolved by hand as "unresolved" and
treat them using the built-in file merge view
full undo/redo: you can undo/redo resolve
actions as long as their results were not written to
disk
conflicting items are displayed in
bold: your attention is attracted to the
important files. The conflicts are colored as well, as long
as they are not resolved, when they get the default text
color
Conflicts
Conflicts are displayed only in merge mode. When comparing
two folders, all the differences are as well conflicts. When
comparing three folders, Ellié Computing Merge can deduce
in many situations what changed from the ancestor folder
configuration. When the software cannot decide what to do, it
defines a conflict so that your attracted to the given portion
of the tree view. The
Resolving
conflicts in Folders section explain features to solve
conflicts.
Comparing archives (ZIP, tar...)
ECMerge contains a built-in converter called Xtract which
can unzip ZIP files. You do not need anything special
to compare such files (as well as any renamed ZIP files format,
such as Open Document format or .xslx for example), except
adding the extension to the list of files to unzip in the
converters options. We recommend you to install 7 Zip, it
works on all the platforms supported by ECMerge and will open
many more formats than just ZIPs.
Many useful options
are available through the contextual
right-click
menu. The top level Actions menu reflects at any time
the commands of the contextual menu.
Many useful options
are available through the contextual