Question

I’m using C# and VB.NET.

I often (every days…) add comments to existing source files. When I check-in these files, I would like to have my merge tool to ignore any changes made to comments – I just want to be sure that I did not change the code.

I use WinMerge and Team Foundation Control Server (yes, no chance : Subversion was not an option when I accepted this job :o). Both of them can ignore white spaces but cannot ignore comments. Result : I have to carefully look at all the changes that I have made to each file before checking them in. And this is pretty cumbersome.

(Well, since most of my co-workers do not comment at all — hey, they use pretty long namespace/class/methods/property/type/constant names that tell it all, guys ! — it’s a lot of work.)

Any suggestions ?

All the best,
Sylvain.

Answer 1

You said you used WinMerge – well it has the ability to filter out comments.

However it only works for comments that are on a separate line, so for example:

int i; // comment

will be detected as different from

int i;