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I'm looking for recommendations on three-way merge tools for .net development on windows. As a software developer working mostly with C#, SQL, Javascript, AngularJS I've typically used kdiff3 but heard good things about Beyond Compare. I'm happy to pay some money for a good tool so Beyond Compare's $60 is fine. But I'd like to know how they differ or if there's a better option. I've trialled Beyond Compare but basically not put the effort into researching what I get that I don't get with kdiff.

In the past I've found kdiff good but not very intuitive when doing more complex merges, and just not as pretty as Beyond Compare. But for example I don't know how the cleverness of their compare algorithms are or how some of their more advanced features compare. What do you get for paying some money?

Mostly I'll be using it for three-way merge on individual local files with TortoiseHg or SourceTree. i.e. not remote/SFTP/etc and not comparing folders.

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  • Good question but you may have to remove the software comparison part as software comparisons are off-topic at this site.
    – Tom
    Jun 5, 2016 at 13:43

2 Answers 2

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You can try WinMerge, an open source differencing and merging tool for Windows. Its recent version supports 3-way File Comparison.

WinMerge for Windows - feature - 3-way File Comparison

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  • Is it any good/better/worse than kdiff or BeyondCompare? I really liked the 2-way WinMerge in the past but 3-way is a lot harder.
    – Rory
    Jan 8, 2019 at 12:46
  • Didn't use BeyondCompare, but I've been using Meld, and was disappointed that there is no version for Linux/macOS. Currently, I use vimdiff, so I can use it across different environments.
    – kenorb
    Jan 8, 2019 at 12:47
  • Imagine you implement a feature and nobody notices it... I didn't even think that Winmerge could be back under active development since it has been forgotten for 5 years
    – Thomas Weller
    Jun 7, 2019 at 20:21
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Meld, a free visual diff and merge tool, can do two- and three-way comparison of files and directories.

Meld for Windows, Merge mode, automatically merge two files using a common ancestor

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