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Bug 339067

Summary:	Support comparing files outside the workspace
Product:	[Eclipse Project] Platform	Reporter:	Martin Oberhuber <mober.at+eclipse>
Component:	Compare	Assignee:	Platform-Compare-Inbox <platform-compare-inbox>
Status:	NEW ---	QA Contact:
Severity:	enhancement
Priority:	P3	CC:	michael.keppler
Version:	3.7
Target Milestone:	---
Hardware:	All
OS:	All
Whiteboard:

Description Martin Oberhuber

2011-03-07 05:11:53 EST

Build ID: Eclipse 3.7m5
CQ:WIND00240314  

As an Eclipse / Workbench user, I want to use the integrated diff/merge tool to compare files that are outside my Workspace, or compare a workspace file against a non-workspace file.

I'd intuitively expect a "File > Compare Files..." menu entry which allows choosing both the left and the right file from either inside or outside the workspace.

And, I'd expect the right-click > Compare With... submenu to also include an "another file" entry which would allow picking the file to compare with from either the Workspace or outside the Workspace (with a history dropdown).

Many other simple programmer's editors support such functionality, so I'd expect it from Eclipse too. Using an external tool such as WinMerge can be used as a workaround, but that's missing advanced features of Eclipse Compare such as the integrated JDT formatter when editing in the diff tool.

Workaround: Link to external file/folder in order to bring them into the workspace for comparison. Can use drag-and-drop with "link files" option on Windows. But this workaround is not intuitive at all.

Comment 1 Martin Oberhuber

2011-09-07 07:59:53 EDT

Another workaround is to install AnyEdit Tools:
   http://andrei.gmxhome.de/anyedit/index.html

Comment 2 Michael Keppler

2016-05-10 04:28:04 EDT

The functionality is there, but very hard to find from the UI. Select an arbitrary file in the project explorer, then use Ctrl-3 and type "Compare with Other Resource".

This will open a dialog to select resources to compare and you can actually select external files and folders there.