The next version of ExamDiff Pro will feature automatic merge conflict resolution, giving users the option to automatically choose the Left, Center, or Right file in case of a merge conflict and also to mark the conflicts as resolved automatically.

By default, ExamDiff Pro will use the Center file for merge conflict resolution and will not mark the conflicts as resolved. An example of the default merge settings in a three-way merge is shown below:

In order to change this behavior, you can simply go to the options dialog through Tools | Options and choose the desired settings under the Conflict Resolution section of the Three-Way Diff and Merge Options menu. In this section, you can select which file to automatically favor in case of a merge conflict and optionally to mark all such conflicts as resolved. The settings in their default state are shown below:

We can now select the Right file to be favored by default and mark merge conflicts as resolved. The results of these option changes after a new comparison are shown below, with the colors in the merged output corresponding to that of the Right file and the conflicts marked as resolved in the status bar on the bottom:

Since you are most likely to use three-way diff and merge from the command line, each of these new options can be triggered with a simple command line option as shown below:

C:\Users>examdiff /merge C:\1.txt C:\2.txt C:\3.txt /preselect:1 /autoresolve

The /preselect command lets you choose which file to use for merge conflicts by default where 1 is Left, 2 is Center (default), and 3 is Right. The /autoresolve command counts these automatic preferences as resolutions. As such, the command listed above will merge the three files, prefer the Left file and consider this preference a resolution to the merge conflict.

The next version of ExamDiff Pro will feature listview grouping, which gives users the ability to group similar files in directory comparison by relative path, type, and status.

This new feature can be accessed in two different ways: through the View menu using View | Grouping and through the right-click context menu under Grouping. These methods are shown in the two screenshots below. The first image shows the View menu method:

The image below shows the context menu method:

With Listview Grouping, there are three different ways to group: By Relative Path, By Type, and By Status. The By Type grouping, for example, is shown below:

When sorting by column with listview grouping enabled, the files will be sorted within each group, unless the sorting is the same as the grouping type. For example, if listview grouping is enabled with grouping by type and the Type column is sorted top to bottom, then the groups themselves will be sorted alphabetically from A to Z.

Another feature of listview grouping is Collapse All and Expand All which can by accessed from the View menu via View | Grouping | Collapse All or from the right-click context menu. Collapse All simply hides all files under their respective groups and Expand All does the opposite. With grouping by type as shown in the screenshot above, the results of Collapse All can be seen in the image below:

Also, when certain groups are collapsed and expanded, the states of each group will persist even when the directories are re-compared. Another useful feature of listview grouping is that when a group heading is clicked, all files underneath it will be selected, allowing for easy control of groups of files. This is shown below, with all files of one type being selected by click on the heading of the group: