Visual Studio 2015, code review, and custom compare/merge tool, is there a way to make all of this work?

Question

I have configured Visual Studio 2015, which uses Team Foundation Version Control, to use Beyond Compare 4 as its merge and compare tool.

This, however, makes the code review functionality nonfunctional since code review relies on the built-in compare tool to give it the source-related comments, etc.

Is there a way to configure this so that it:

1. Uses my custom (Beyond Compare 4) tool for normal compares and merges
2. Uses the built-in compare functionality when conducting a code review

The dialogs for setting up a custom compare and merge tool doesn't seem to have anything that helps here, and I've looked through the rest of the settings without finding anything.

Answer 1

I don't think VS 2015 offers such funcionallity. There is no way to separete code review compare utility from standard compare. Moreover it seems that Beyond Compare 4 doesn't support code reviews inside VS. However I found 2 solutions to your problem:

• Use a software that supports both standard compare and code review (comments etc.) for e.g. https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/dace3633-0b51-4629-85d4-c59cdce5bb3b
• Use VS 2012/ TFS 2012 as in that version code reviews are always performed with buildin compare ultility: https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/vstudio/en-US/e7bf2a2d-8347-40ee-9561-fef55c4f0686/tfs-2012vs-2012-code-reviews-diff-tool?forum=tfsgeneral