Visual Studio: Ignore Whitespace During Compare

Visual Studio, by default, will include whitespace in its comparison when comparing two files.

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

Depending on your Visual Studio version and installation 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
VS2019: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\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

You can configure older versions of Visual Studio to use the latest Visual Studio compare tool using this method as well. Just set the path for the Compare tool in the older version to point to the path of the newer version.