What is the purpose of the WinDiff utility found in the Server CD??

[PeeluckyDuckee]

You can use it to compare specific files or directories. When would you need to use that exactly?

Thx.
Plucky

 

[Keen314]

Perhaps to make sure your backups are good?

 

[PeeluckyDuckee]

Sure, that'd be one of the uses. Never thought of that, thx 🙂 But if you're doing a backup in Windows, the backup utility has that verify feature builtin, I believe.

 

[Keen314]

Well, I'm just shooting off ideas off the top of my head here, so I really don't know. Maybe there is some obvious powerful use for this thing, and we're just missing it. *shrugs*

 

[iluvdeal]

I use it to check my burns sometimes.

 

[Nothinman]

I don't know about in Windows but a lot of source code patches are generated by a command line diff, not sure what kind of output WinDIFF can make but it might be usefull for that.

 

[CQuinn]

What I use Windiff for:

At work, when we create a new release of software on CD, we use it to compare
against the "final" build on the development server. This way we can make sure
the changes we say are in there are actually going out with the CD.
(There were times in the past when some programmer would slip new changes into
the code at the last minute, and we would end up sending out untested code
to customers... fortunately it never caused a big problem, but its still
not good practice)

What we more often end up using it for is to compare one build of software
against an older build to isolate what changes in the code may have
resulted in a new bug, or inadvertenly fixed another one.

Also we sometimes need to compare archives over the network, to be sure that
all the files in \\dev1\build8 match the files I am working with in
\\test1\current_build. (I made the directory names up as an example)

At home, I use it as an extra validation for CD burns. Sometimes the
burn software thinks everything went alright, and windiff later shows that
one file or directory out of hundreds does not read back properly.
Its better to know that before you erase those files from the HD.

Also, some CD-R media will read back fine in the CDRW, but not read back
as well on older or different CD/DVD drives. And windiff can help notify
me when that is happening too.

Sometimes I end up burning the same files twice without realizing it, or
download the same file again because I think its a newer version that
what I downloaded last month. And I use Windiff to double check that.

Also, I transport some email and work files back and forth on CDRWs, and
windiff provides a quick way of checking where the more up to date files
are at any given point. If there is a difference between files, it can
also show you which lines and points are different.

Windiff cannot be used (AFAIK) the same way as the command line diff util
(to make patches for software releases), but it still provides a neat way
to compare and isolate the differences between groups of files.