Re: [Kdiff3-user] "Try harder feature"

[Joachim E. <joa...@gm...>]

On Monday 27 June 2005 20:25, Preston, Keith wrote:
> Hello, my name is Keith Preston and I work for Engenio Information
> Technologies.   We recent incorporated your wonderful Kdiff3 program in our
> code management software (Telelogic's CM synergy)   However we are coming
> across a few simple problems with the resulting code merge.  Our biggest
> problem was when there are large chunks of code added in the middle of the
> file (1000+ lines) the matching algorithm does not always line up the code
> correctly.   I was wondering if there was an option to increase the number
> of look ahead lines in the source code as we had this same problem with
> diff3 and worked to change it.   We have experimented with the try harder
> box, but have not had good results.   I didn't know if this box searched
> farther ahead or just used a different algorithm.  Sometime it works better
> and sometime worse.
>
>
>
> Keith

Hi Keith,

I'm glad KDiff3 can help you.
About your problem: The "Try hard"-option is equivalent to the 
"--minimal"-switch of GNU-diff. This actually means that the look-ahead 
considers the whole file.

But the problem is probably that no matching algorithm can never be perfect 
for every situation and purpose. One solution that I'm currently 
investigating is to let the user help the diff tool. This would mean that the 
user can specify certain lines that must be aligned for the comparison and 
merge.

I hope, that I can get this stable for the next version.

Cheers,
Joachim