I used to work with BeyondCompare and it was able to compare *.class files by configuring it to run a decompiler before comparison.
Is there something like that for WinMerge? Or a plug-in that can do it instead?
Use WinMerge to compare *.class files
winmerge
Related Solutions
From the TortoiseHg FAQ:
Add these lines to your personal Mercurial.ini file
[extensions] extdiff = [extdiff] cmd.winmerge = C:\Program Files\WinMerge\WinMergeU.exe opts.winmerge = /e /x /u /wl
Now run the Global Settings tool. On the TortoiseHg tab, you should see winmerge available in the drop-down list for Visual Diff Command. Select winmerge, apply, then close.
This same approach can be used to add nearly any visual diff tool, but be aware that your diff tool must be able to support directory diffs if it is to be used by TortoiseHg, unless you are using release 0.8 or later.
Joel also provided a solution here in case you run Mercurial under Cygwin.
Explanation of WinMerge command line args here. Summary:
/eenables you to close WinMerge with a single Esc key press/xcloses WinMerge (after displaying an information dialog) when you start a comparison of identical files/uprevents WinMerge from adding either path (left or right) to the Most Recently Used (MRU) list/wlopens the left side as read-only
I would have thought that WinMerge with the following settings would work:
If it doesn't, I would ask the question in their forums.
I believe this is worth the effort, as WinMerge is my best file-compare product.
Best Answer
I have spent the day writing a DLL plugin for Winmerge to do this - it isn't the world's greatest thing, but it gets the job done.
Takes the filename, splits it into directory and class name, then calls javap for each class file. It is rather slow unfortunately (javap's fault I'd say).
I have put the DLL here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/6hywu64zzj248t1/displayclassfiles.dll?dl=1
Absolutely no licence, warranty, etc. No trojans or virii either. I will get around to cleaning up the source and putting it up somewhere (probably with the winmerge project people).
Create a "MergePlugins" directory where your winmerge executable is and put the dll in there. It is automatically activated on *.class files.
The hardest part was working out how to launch javap, windows programming is just so awful.
It would be nice if winmerge compared the files before unpacking them to see if they are different - that would save a bit of time. Maybe this can be accomplished in the plugin somehow but as I said I really just hacked this together as quick as I could.
Oh I should mention you will need javap on your path.
EDIT: Source code is here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/gberx85pdcdlor2/unpackjavaclassfiles%20source.7z?dl=1 Built using visual studio 2005 - Adapted from DisplayBinaryFiles plugin which is available with winmerge source package.