WinMerge 2.14.0 Release Notes

• About This Release
• What Is New in 2.14.0?
• What Is New in 2.13.20 beta?
• Known Issues

June 2011

About This Release

This is a WinMerge 2.14.0 stable release. This release replaces earlier WinMerge stable releases as a recommended release.

Please submit bug reports to our bug-tracker.

What Is New in 2.14.0?

WinMerge 2.14 is an important update to WinMerge. There are lots of improvements and bug fixes since 2.12.4 stable release.

2.14.0 stable release has many changes after beta release. But see also the 2.13 beta release changes below for other important changes in this release.

Improvements

• Improve startup time
• Improve editing of linefilter regular expressions
• Improve color options organization

Other changes

• Update PCRE to version 8.10
• Update SCEW to version 1.1.2
• Add menuitems for selecting automatic or manual prediffing
• Add accelerator keys for Shell context menu
• Allow editing context line count in patch creator
• Add /xq command line switch for closing WinMerge after identical files and not showing message
• Allow setting codepage from command line
• Allow giving encoding name as custom codepage
• Add new options dialog panel for folder compare options
• Add options GUI for quick compare limit
• Write config log as UTF-8 file

Bugs fixed

• Untranslated string ("Merge.rc:nnnn") was displayed in status bar
• Pane headers not updated after language change
• Quick contents compare didn't ignore EOL byte differences
• Compare by size always checked file times too
• Crash when pasting from clipboard
• Keeps verifing path even turned off in options
• Crash after deleting text
• Added EOL chars between copied file/path names
• Created new matching folder to wrong folder
• Strange scrolling effect in location pane
• Plugin error after interrupting folder compare
• "+" and "-" from the number block don't work in the editor
• Date format did not respect Regional Settings

New Translation

• Basque

Translation updates

• Hungarian
• Turkish
• Russian
• Norwegian
• Danish

What Is New in 2.13.20 beta?

WinMerge before version 2.13.20 was vulnerable to DLL hijacking as described in Microsoft Security Advisory (2269637). To fix this problem, we must also drop support for Windows 9x, ME and NT4.

Installer

• Drop Windows 9x/ME/NT4 support and use Microsoft runtime libraries installer
• Remove Uninstall shortcut from start menu folder
• Don't install quick launch icon for Windows 7

Other changes

• Add missing keywords to Pascal highlighter
• Recognize .ascx files as ASP files
• Fix help locations
• Show only "Copy to other side" item in file compare context menu
• Expand/collapse folders from keyboard
• Improve detecting XML files in file compare
• Initialize folder selection dialog to currently selected folder in options dialog

Bugs fixed

• WinMerge was vulnerable to DLL hijacking as described in Microsoft Security Advisory (2269637)
• Location pane focus enabled "Save"
• "Copy and advance" toolbar icons not automatically enabled

New Translations

• Persian
• Serbian

Translation updates

• Bulgarian
• Chinese
• Dutch
• French
• Slovenian
• Spanish
• Turkish
• Ukrainian

Known Issues

• 7-zip installed from MSI installer may not work with WinMerge.

  Workaround: Use the EXE installer of 7-Zip. See manual 4.5. 7-Zip and Archive Support for more information.

• Old IE version can cause crashes when handling archive files.

  Workaround: If WinMerge crashes when handling archives, consider updating IE to version 6.0 or later.

• Supercopier application causes WinMerge to hang.

  Supercopier application causes WinMerge to not exit properly and leaves WinMerge process hang. See the bug reports:

  • #1976241 the winmerge.exe process doesn't stop itself
  • #1602313 WinMerge stays in tasklist after closing

  Workaround: Disable the Supercopier when using WinMerge.

• There is no way to specify the codepage for a particular file.

  Workaround: Specify the default codepages for all files in Edit->Options->Codepage->Custom codepage.

• There is no 3-way merge. #990464

• Filters only applied when using full compare.

  Line filtering is only applied in folder compare when using Full Contents-compare method.

  If you are using any other compare method, line filters are not applied. Files marked different in folder compare can get status changed to identical when opening them to file compare.

• Some plugins shipped with WinMerge require Visual Basic runtime library to work

  Workaround: You can download the required file msvbvm60.dll or use the Run-Time Redistribution Pack from Microsoft.

  Workaround 2: If you don't need the plugin, you can safely remove it.

• VSS integration cannot add new files to VSS

  If you need to add a new file, you must add it via VSS client program.

• Unset WinMerge integration from ClearCase

  To remove WinMerge integration, you'll need to edit one file by hand:

  1. Find ClearCase installation folder
     Usually it is something like C:\Program Files\Rational\ClearCase
  2. Go to subfolder lib\mgrs\
  3. Open file map in there to editor program
  4. Comment-out the line starting with "text_file_delta xcompare", containing "WinMergeU.exe"
  5. Uncomment the line starting with "text_file_delta xcompare", containing "cleardiffmrg.exe"