How to ignore white space when comparing source in Visual Studio / TFS?

The default diff tool in Visual Studio is extremely annoying. I suggest you use an alternative. WinMerge is my favourite. It also has an option to ignore whitespace (menu Edit -> Options -> Compare -> Ignore all (under the groupbox "Whitespace" at the top)).

See Using WinMerge with TFS.


There is a "=" button on Visual Studio 2017 toolbar that helps to compare files as you want. Hope this screenshot will help.

Screenshot ofVisual Studio 2017 toolbar. The button with the equal sign is on the right, next to the lock icon. The tooltip for the button states "Ignore trim whitespace Ctrl+\, Ctrl+Space".


This is a workaround that seems to get around the problem.

In Visual Studio, select Tools / Options / Source Control / Visual Studio Team Foundation System and click the Configure User Tools button.

In the dialog, Add an item with the following settings.

  • Extension : .*
  • Operation : Compare
  • Command : C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\diffmerge.exe
  • Arguments : %1 %2 %6 %7 %5 /ignorespace

Edit:

Depending on your Visual Studio version and instalation path (x64/x86), the command option may be...

VS2010: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\diffmerge.exe
VS2012: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\Common7\IDE\diffmerge.exe
VS2013: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7\IDE\vsDiffMerge.exe
VS2015: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\IDE\vsDiffMerge.exe
VS2017: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Enterprise\Common7\IDE\CommonExtensions\Microsoft\TeamFoundation\Team Explorer\vsDiffMerge.exe

In the argument option leave it with the same number of arguments as the VS suggests and just add /ignorespace in the end. For example, in the VS2015 it will be: 

%1 %2 /ignorespace

Tags:

Tfs

Visual Studio 2010

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