(In WinMerge, that’s on the menu with Tools > Generate a patch.) Generate a diff (patch) file, call it the same name as the review file, but add.(Optionally, for better syntax highlighting, can precede comments with comment character such as “//”. Go to the pane of the review file and type review comments anywhere I want.Select the source code file and the review file (they are next to each other in alphabetical order), right-click and open WinMerge on them.Immediately Save As MyFile_flastname_review.c in the same directory.Browse to the source code file I want to review open it.The parts in square brackets are optional: omit them if you don’t want to clutter up your version control system with code review records, but just want to use them to prepare for sitting with code author. Say the source file to review is called “MyFile.c”, and the reviewer’s name is Firstname Lastname.

In my example, I’m using open-source WinMerge as my diff tool, IBM Rational ClearCase as my version control system, and Microsoft Windows Explorer as my tree browser. The following procedure works fine, and “supports” any version control system. But before the “build or buy” decision, I thought I’d ask around the office.Ī lot of ideas, but here was the simplest. I started thinking about writing a plugin for some popular text editor, such as Notepad++ or Notepad2 (the latter is my favorite for simple editing). And since plain text really shouldn’t be marked up, I’d want it to save the comments in a separate text file, with line numbers of what was commented on, and the comments’ text. I’m not the first one looking for this capability: “climbanymountain” asked about it on Joel on Software back in 2006: “ win32 text editor for code review?”

I know what I want: highlight-and-comment capability in a text editor.

Winmerge word