When comparing DiffMerge vs GNU Diffutils (diff), the Slant community recommends DiffMerge for most people. In the question“What are the best Linux diff tools?” DiffMerge is ranked 9th while GNU Diffutils (diff) is ranked 10th. The most important reason people chose DiffMerge is:
DiffMerge is free of charge to download and use for both commercial and open source projects. There's no license needed. However, people who want to contribute to the project monetarily [can do so](https://www.sourcegear.com/diffmerge/register).
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Pros
Pro Completely free
DiffMerge is free of charge to download and use for both commercial and open source projects. There's no license needed. However, people who want to contribute to the project monetarily can do so.
Pro Cross platform
DiffMerge is cross platform and is available for all major operating systems. This means WIndows, Linux and OSX
Pro Folder compare
Pro Three way merges
DiffMerge supports three way merges.
Pro Command Line Interface makes it easy to use for people who work a lot in the terminal
Great for creating patch files, using with other *nix utilities (for example, colordiff). Does not require a GUI.
Pro Creates patches
These patches can be used to apply the differences to the same source file at a different storage location (different folder, different machine).
Pro Multiple formats
The difference can be output in formats known as normal, unified, ed, rcs, and side-by-side.
Pro Compares entiry directory trees
Two directory trees can be compared file by file recursively. All differences are output concisely.
Cons
Con Startup time can be slow
DiffMerge's startup time can be quite slow sometimes.