This is a Windows ONLY project.
An application to graphically compare two folders, or files, is VERY IMPORTANT to programmers... and perhaps equally important to HTML authors, and many, many others...
Some of the original source is from a 1992-2010 Microsoft windows support tools SDK, called WinDiff. Searching around I again found a zip of that source - see windiff\zip\windiff_src.zip. Just for fun, unzipped this source, move the files around a little, and massaged it to compile with MSVC 16 2019, first in 32-bits, then again in 64-bits... see windiff/README.md ... this is presented for archival purposes only.
But starting circa 2001, here it has been developed, with some of my own extensions, tested in 32-bit and 64-bit, and seem quite stable, all the source is in src...
This repository takes over from my Directory Compare (DC4W) web page, where the OLD source was only available as a ZIP download...
That is, any further development, if there is any, will only be in this repository.
To the degree possible, this source is released into the Public Domain. See the COPYING.txt
To compile Dc4w from source, you need CMake installed. This allows you to generate the build system of your choice. Run cmake --help to see the list of Generators available, on your system, and show the default generator.
If your chosen generator is installed, then to build Dc4w do -
cd build
cmake .. [options]
cmake --build . --config Release
If cmake does not choose the desired build generator by default, the option -G "Name of generator" must be given.
There are some option listed in the CMakeLists.txt file. Use -DUSE_STATIC_RUNTIME=OFF, to use the dynamic windows runtime - make a smaller executable.
Alternatively, you can use the cmake GUI. Navigate to where you put the source, and use the build folder, to where to build the binaries, then Configure, Generate, ...
And if all successful, and you use MSVC, you can load the MSVC IDE, loading the dc4w.sln, and proceed to build the project from within the IDE...
In Windows, it does not make much sense to actually install the resultant dc4w.exe. You can create a Windows shortcut to the exe, to run it... or copy it to a folder already existing in your PATH environment variable, if you want to load it from the command line.
After building, and using this app for many years, there are now better, more featured apps available -
- WinMerge - A free project, with binary distribution, updates, and source available...
- Beyond Compare - A commercial app, but well worth the price...
- And there are MANY others... and if you need to compare folders remotely, then there is -
- FileZilla - A free project, with binary distribution, and automatic updates...
- WinSCP - Not personally tested, but looks good from the reading... must try it...
And there are probably others... These days, most of these offer much more than my dc4w...
Anyway, have FUN - Geoff - 20200624
; eof