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Project Description
Visual Studio 2005 and 2008 add-in which provides the IDE with a local file history à la Eclipse, with a convenient and configurable way to view, restore, delete, and compare differents versions.

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Features
  • When you save a file in Visual Studio which belongs to the main solution (i.e. is not a misc file), this add-in copies a backup of the file in a database local to the solution. There is one history database per solution (not per project). This database can be found in the same directory as the solution file (.sln), it's stored in a hidden directory whose name begins with ".VLH2005.". You can have as many solutions as you want in the same directory.
  • When you are viewing a file which has a history, the history window shows all revisions of this file, and you can open, delete, restore, and compare those revisions the easy way.
  • You can configure the tool used for file comparison, the number of days to keep a backup in the history, the minimum time between two backups, and a list of extensions to ignore.
  • Several file comparison tools are automatically detected and preconfigured (see below for the list). If your favorite tool is not on the list, you can easily configure VLH2005 to use it with command-line options.
  • It tracks renamed files, so you won't loose the history of a file when you rename it inside Visual Studio.
  • It tracks renamed solutions too, so you won't loose the history of a solution, even if you rename it outside Visual Studio.
  • When you save the main solution in a new folder within Visual Studio, the history database is automatically moved in the same folder.
  • It always maintains a clean database: whatever you do, the .history folder will never store unused data, since it's cleaned up when you open or close a solution.

Announcements

Coming next
  • Final release with improved stability
  • More preconfigured file comparison tools (don't hesitate to contact me to add your favorite one)
  • "for everyone" installation

Auto-detected and preconfigured file comparison tools

Feel free to test and give me some feedback, I really think this feature is missing in Visual Studio, now you won't have to buy an add-in just for this.
Oh and btw, I'm French, so don't hesitate to contact me for any spelling mistake ^_^
Last edited Jan 31 at 5:25 PM  by rolkA, version 58
Comments
Rafy wrote  Oct 19 2007 at 1:19 PM  
Good work !!!!!!

thoughtcriminal wrote  Oct 19 2007 at 5:58 PM  
This is really awesome idea. It definitely can prove usefull even together with some Control Version System.
Keep up the good work.

rolkA wrote  Oct 24 2007 at 3:11 PM  
Thank you !

mstrobel wrote  Oct 24 2007 at 10:24 PM  
Hey wow, I was just Googling for something *exactly* like this yesterday. You, sir, are my hero of the day. A great way to be able to make track and rollback offline changes when I'm not connected to CodePlex TFS :).

rolkA wrote  Oct 24 2007 at 10:56 PM  
I'm glad that you find it useful, tell me (or create a new workitem) if there is something you don't like in the current release that really annoys you, and I'll do my best to fix it ;-)

soumyasch wrote  Jan 9 at 5:53 PM  
Is there any way to use this with SuperDiff (the one that comes as a part of VS SDK PowerToys)? That aside, congratulations for a great tool.

rolkA wrote  Jan 17 at 8:24 PM  
I don't think so, since it's not an external tool.

Noodle wrote  Mar 3 at 6:11 PM  
This isn't an issue, so I thought I'd post it here, but please please can you add a setting to say where to store the local history files for each solution? Thanks! (thanks also for this great tool - it's brilliant!)

rolkA wrote  Mar 3 at 6:43 PM  
For v1, I want to avoid unnecessary complexity, and I don't want to add new features from beta 3, but it is a great idea for a future version., I'll definitly add this feature. You may create a work item if you want (a "feature" one). Thank you.

jtrahan wrote  Mar 7 at 2:17 PM  
It would be nice if this worked for Sql Server Management Studio AKA SSMS. It would be nice to keep a local history of SQL queries.

Finglor wrote  May 15 at 2:17 PM  
Is it possible to make a feature which shows all the changed files when visual studio is closed for example?
Im looking for a tool to show me which files have changed and it would be nice if this output could be pasted into html format easily.

Monorom wrote  Aug 26 at 3:41 PM  
I'm a Eclipse user and this add-in for VS is very helpful.
I also use JMeld (http://www.xs4all.nl/~keeskuip/jmeld/index.htm) to compare files which is free and costs no money. It would be nice if there's a configuration for it :)

Merci beacoup et bonne continuation !

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