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.
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