diff-ext compare files easily

Introduction

Why? I use Windows explorer as my main file manager. From time to time I need to see what is the difference between two files. There are many graphical diff programs available. Like kdiff3, tkdiff, WinMerge, csdiff, Araxis merge etc. Unfortunately these tools do not give one ability to compare files from Explorer or (in case of Araxis) do not allow to compare files from different directories easily. So, I wrote a very simple extension to Explorer's context menu.

This shell extension (diff-ext) makes it possible to launch file comparison tool for 2 or 3 files (depending on the tool) in the same directory or "save" a file(s) for later comparison. It acts as external most recent used (MRU) file list for the comparison tool.

As of diff-ext 1.9.2, Windows installer comes with binaries for 32 and 64 bit Windows OS. For 64bit Windows both AMD64 and IA64 versions are included. Windows XP and later is currently supported.

Diff-ext has also been ported to Unix/Linux. It works in Gnome, KDE and XFCE environmrnts. Diff-ext integrates with Nautilus (gdiff-ext), Konqueror (kdiff-ext) and Thunar (xdiff-ext) file managers.

Help wanted!

I would like to make diff-ext as friendly as possible. Part of this effort includes translation of menu commands, status bar hints and dialogs to as many languages as possible. Please fell free to drop me an email if you feel that you can face the translation challenge.

In the future I plan to write a translators walk through, so keep your eyes on the documentation section.