How To: Fire up your trusty Beyond Compare and this is the first screen you come to:
Use the 2 "browse" buttons on the right to select the 2 directories with the files you want to compare. If you plan to be comparing this set of files multiple times, you can give the session a name so you can come back to it at a later date.
The next screen you'll come to looks like this:
Here is where the file names should match up. Using the color legend at the bottom, you can see that newer files are in red and files with no differences are in black. Files that do not have a match are in blue.
Choose a folder you want to compare/upgrade and this is the screen you come to next:
It goes a little deeper in and lists the files in the sub-directories to be compared.
Choose a file you want to compare/upgrade. This is where it gets interesting. BC will go through and compare the 2 files line by line and try to match what is the same - producing this screen:
Major differences (code changes) are highlighted in red, minor differences (spacing, capitalization differences) are in blue, and blank lines are in gray. Down the left-hand side there is a quick "jump-to" column and the particular section of code you are on is highlighted.
Finding a difference on one side, you use your mouse to highlight that section of lines and click on one of the arrows up top to copy it to the right or left, depending on which side has the newer files (if left is newer, you would want to copy those changes to the right). Pay careful attention to
all differences, as missing a space, semi-colon, or other code changes can have disastrous effects on your files (you did make backups first, didn't you? good...
).
You can also double-click on lines to manually edit for extra-tedious changes that might be intertwined with a previously installed modification.
Once you've copied the differences from the newer file to the older, click on "File>>Save" and the changes are set. Uplload in ascii, check permissions, and see if anything's broke
There's quite a bit more to this than the quick rundown I've given you, but most of your time will be spent using the basic steps. Once you get the hang of it, you can file compare new versions in in minutes.
