WinMerge
# WinMerge

WinMerge is a free software tool for data comparison and merging of text-like files. It is useful for determining what has changed between versions, and then merging changes between versions.

WinMerge runs on Microsoft Windows.

## Features

* Visual differencing and merging of text files
* Flexible editor with syntax highlighting, line numbers, and word-wrap
* Handles DOS, Unix, and Mac text file formats
* Unicode support (as of version 2.8.0, UTF-8 files are correctly read without a BOM)
* Difference pane shows current difference in two vertical panes
* Location pane shows map of files compared
* Highlights differences inside lines in file compare
* Can also generate HTML report with differences highlighted
* Regular expression-based file filters in directory compare allow excluding and including items
* Moved lines detection in file compare
* Ability to ignore whitespace and letter case changes
* Creates patch files
* Shell integration (supports 64-bit Windows versions)
* Rudimentary Visual SourceSafe and Rational ClearCase integration
* Archive file support using 7-Zip
* Plug-ins
* Language localization via plain-text PO files
* Online manual and installed HTML help manual
* Generates normal, context, and unified patches.

## Codebases and forks

For a planned development of version 3.x no commits have been made to the 3.0 codebase since 2011.

In 2011 a fork of the 2.x codebase titled "WinMerge 2011" was created. This new branch has continued to see active feature and bug fix development. It has also removed ATL/MFC dependencies so that WinMerge can be built using the free Visual C++ Express editions.

