Question

Does anyone know if it is possible to use the TFS Difference.DiffFiles() methods on files that are not under source control? I know when I am in the source control UI I can select local paths that let me move outside of the workspace. I have made some efforts towards getting this to work but I am not sure how to read the DiffSegment results.

    options.Flags = DiffOptionFlags.None;
    options.OutputType = DiffOutputType.Unified;
    options.TargetEncoding = Console.OutputEncoding;
    options.SourceEncoding = Console.OutputEncoding;
    options.StreamWriter = new StreamWriter(memStream);
    options.StreamWriter.AutoFlush = true;

    DiffSegment seg = Difference.DiffFiles(pathA, Encoding.UTF8.WindowsCodePage, pathB, Encoding.UTF8.WindowsCodePage, options);

In some lite testing I can seem to see segments that get added but the OriginalStart seems to match the ModifiedStart so I just may not want to do this. If anyone has recommendations on a decent Diff API I’m open.

Answer 1

tfs api most definitely allows you to compare two local files. I don’t think you need most of the DiffOptionFlags, you can just do the following:

DiffSegment segment = Difference.DiffFiles(
    file1, 
    FileType.Detect(file1, null), 
    file2, 
    FileType.Detect(file2, null), 
    new DiffOptions());

As Mohamed describes briefly here.

Russell describes in details what to do with DiffSegment here.

For example I did the following

do
{
    Console.WriteLine(segment.Type + " " + segment.OriginalStart + " " + Segment.OriginalLength);
} while ((segment = segment.Next) != null);

Hope this helps!