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Status Not under consideration
Categories Source Control
Created by Guest
Created on Jun 20, 2022

Binary Compare should display comparison of binary data and not be restricted to text compare

When invoking compare for binary files, the binary differences are not displayed by the Binary Compare, instead the following message is displayed:

First bytes differ at position NNNN

Switch to Text Compare using the drop down menu above


Reporting the "first bytes differ" is not much value in a comparison, other than to recognize the files are different.

Switching to a text compare has limited value and is only really useful if the content of the binary file has recognizable text characters, for many binary files there is no recognizable text and so a text comparison is no value for those.

In many cases, binary data will be of a specific format known to the user (in some cases the binary will be to a defined standard, or will be a proprietary format) and a binary comparison is useful but a text comparison is not.

It would be more efficient to be able to visualize a binary comparison for repository files instead of having to use an external compare tool (for comparison of different versions of the same binary file), or download files to be accessed locally through an external compare tool (for different binary files - for which external compare is not currently supported)





Idea priority High
Needed By Quarter
  • Guest
    Reply
    |
    Jun 23, 2022

    EWM RFE review board has evaluated this request. This request, while valid, is being rejected because the review board does not see value in providing a generic binary data compare tool in EWM because Eclipse supports the ability to contribute compare editors for specific file types. Requestor should check to see if the file type they are interested in supported by either Eclipse projects or a third party.