Here’s the Deal

P4Merge vs BBEdit

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When comparing P4Merge vs BBEdit, the Slant community recommends P4Merge for most people. In the question“What are the best folder/file compare/diff tools for either OSX, Linux or Windows?” P4Merge is ranked 5th while BBEdit is ranked 7th. The most important reason people chose P4Merge is:

P4Merge is free of charge.

Specs

LicenseFree

PlatformsWindows; Mac; Linux

LicenseProprietary

PlatformsMac

Collaborative editingNo

Supported remote file editing protocolsYes

Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking

Common Questions

What are the best folder/file compare/diff tools for either OSX, Linux or Windows?

Pros

Pro
Free

P4Merge is free of charge.

Pro
3 way merge support

P4Merge presents merge information in 4 panes - BASE, LOCAL, REMOTE and MERGE_RESULT.

Pro
Detects minimal changes without having a common ancestor

After a merge sometimes you have conflicts. You can resolve them by using a merge tool. You can run git mergetool --tool-help to get more details about what tools are supported.

You will get an output like the following
git mergetool --tool=<tool> may be set to one of the following:

      p4merge
        tortoisemerge
        vimdiff
        vimdiff2
        vimdiff3

The following tools are valid, but not currently available:

        araxis
        bc
        bc3
        codecompare
        deltawalker
        diffmerge
        diffuse
        ecmerge
        emerge
        gvimdiff
        gvimdiff2
        gvimdiff3
        kdiff3
        meld
        opendiff
        tkdiff
        winmerge
        xxdiff

Some of the tools listed above only work in a windowed environment. If run in a terminal-only session, they will fail.

Pro
Also has image diffing

For those who are working in both text based source code or files, as well as images, its nice to have the diff functionality of both present in the same product.

Pro
Cross-platform with a good Mac port

P4Merge works on Windows, Linux and OS X.

Pro
Stable development, been around for decades

BBEdit is commercial software, the paid counterpart to their free application Textwrangler. Though BBEdit comes off as pricey, this allows for stable and consistent updates from the developers. BBEdit has been around since 1992.

Pro
Can open very large files

Pro
Just about every feature is already built in

No searching for plug-ins that may or may not work.

Pro
Great customer support

The developer is very responsive to bug reports and feature suggestions.

Pro
Native application

Follows platform standards.

Pro
Built-in FTP/SFTP browser

BBEdit can open files directly from, and save them to, any available FTP server. It can also open and save files directly via SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol).

Pro
Great JAMStack environment

You can build the static site of your dreams without needing any external assistants. Although it does not process LESS, SASS, or SCSS files, BBEdit's includes are very powerful.