How Do I Use Beyond Compare: Introduction to Beyon
  • Forty things about Beyond Compare
  • Acknowledgements
  • Learn Beyond Compare in 5 Minutes
    • Quickstart: open two directories
    • Quickstart: open two files
    • Quickstart: move a file
    • Text Compare: understand the display
    • Downloads
  • Text Compare
    • How to use Beyond Compare for Text Compare
    • In Beyond Compare, what are unimportant differences?
    • Why no word-wrap ??
    • How to use Beyond Compare to confirm 100% replacement
    • Ignore Trivial Differences, Like Timestamps
  • Git
    • How to use Beyond Compare with Git
    • Do a roll-back to peek at your old code
    • Quickstart: Folder Merge
    • Why merge three folders?
    • Beyond Compare Three-Way Folder Merge Symbols Explained
    • How to compare two commits, both old, in Git
    • Git mergetool: merging three files.
    • How to recover an older version of your code with Git and Beyond Compare
    • Peeking under the hood at how Git does its thing
    • Getting better at Git
    • Find changes since last commit
    • Patches
    • How to configure Visual Studio to use Beyond Compare for Version Control
  • Scripts and the Command Line
    • How to use Beyond Compare in the Terminal
    • How to do an automatic backup every day
    • Write a Batch File That Will Start Several Syncs Simultaneously
    • Write a batch file that will start several text compares automatically
    • TL; DR
  • Table Compare
    • Quickstart: open a couple of Excel spreadsheets
    • Example: finding missing items in a pair of spreadsheets
    • Keys
    • Mismatched Columns
    • Longer example, opening .csv files
    • How to remove columns from a spreadsheet
    • Aligned vs Unaligned
    • Example: List of City Trees
  • Sync / Folders
    • Backup your entire computer (Part One)
    • Backup your entire computer (Part Two)
    • Backup, advanced
    • RegEx Examples: Filename Alignment Overide
    • Scan a lot or a little
  • Other
    • Peek
    • Binary
    • Undo
    • Colors
    • How to compare images
    • Report: Text Compare
    • Report: Table Compare
    • Looooonnnnngggg lines...
    • Binary: How to see the 1's and 0's
    • How to write your first script
    • How to find redundant or duplicate files
    • Minor Edge Cases
    • Shortcut Key
    • How to ignore parts of your file
    • Folder System Context Menus
    • About Evan Genest
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  1. Git

Quickstart: Folder Merge

PreviousDo a roll-back to peek at your old codeNextWhy merge three folders?

Last updated 6 years ago

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It's easy to imagine a project folder with several files in it. Now imagine that you did work in the folder on two different days and saved it in two different Git branches. Or imagine a team, where you started the folder, copied it to two teamates, and they helped you improve it.

In any case, you will have the following: an older folder, that is considered the ancestor, and two newer folders. All three need to be recombined. In Beyond Compare this is called a Folder Merge session. If you want to download the files used in this example, rightclick and SaveAs this link:

Here are the 26 empty files you have set up in a project folder:

Here are the modifications your teammates made:

At this point, assuming every teammate has been good about saving their work, you have three different versions of the project. In the middle, is your version, the ancestor, where every file size is zero bytes. On the left and right, open your teamates folders. The file sizes show which ones have been modified. Here are the meanings of some of the symbols in this view:

As soon as you press the grey "Merge!" key at the top, Beyond Compare will irreversibly (there is no undo!) combine your files. But how can we know what is about to happen? Check out the margin of your viewer:

The easiest way to get your three folders into the above view is to drag them with the mouse. But you could also load them by browsing from the three manilla-folder icons. Or, in github, this view can open up from a git mergetool request at the.

I encourage you to download and make your mistakes on the downloadable sample data above. After you unzip and play with that sample folder, go to the Scooter Software site. There is a good description of FolderMerge on page 30 of their official .

command line
Beyond Compare documentation
17KB
test-merge-for-three-folders-A-Z.zip
archive
17KB
test-merge-for-three-folders-A-Z.zip
archive
(Top) contains a difference (Bottom) binary-same (files are byte-for-byte identical)
You need to tell Beyond Compare where to merge to. If you understand version control workflow, you will see that it makes sense to merge to Left or Right, not to "other"
These arrows show the prediction of which side are going to get incorporated as soon as you press "Merge!"
Beyond Compare is unsure what to do here because File A was changed by both of your teamates. Beyond Compare requests that you manually choose a side using your mouse.