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visual-studio-2019beyondcomparebeyondcompare4

Beyond Compare 4 and Visual Studio 2019

I have configured Beyond Compare 4 as an external tool. And now I see bizarre behavior. It works as expected for the first compare (first tab of the Beyond Compare). But when I'm opening a send tab (starting to compare a send file without closing Beyond Compare instance) it does not work. The followed actions are happening:

  1. VS creates a temporary file in %temp%\TFSTemp
  2. New tab of Beyond Compare will be created
  3. The temporary file will be removed(! why? !)
  4. Beyond Compare can't compare files and Beyond Compare shows an error:

"Cannot open file 'c:\users.....\Temp\TFSTemp\vctmp49504_39879.csproj'. The system cannot find file specified"

The followed settings

enter image description here

does not solve the problem.

Is it a known bug? Is there any workaround? This behavior makes actually Beyond Compare unusable :(

Solution

  • Make sure you call bcomp.exe for diffs and merges.

    This opens every compare and merge in a separate helper process, allowing version control to detect when the comparison is complete.

    If you use bcompare.exe, it opens all comparisons in a single process, so version control can't detect when the comparison is complete if you launch more than one diff.

    For more info: Using Beyond Compare with Version Control Systems - Visual Studio - Team Foundation Server (TFS)