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Review based on version: 0.9.95 (2009-03-03) Windows XP

The software is licensed under the GNU GPL so you are free to change the software as you like.

Apart from a friendly introduction to the software you basically select either two or three folders to compare and you are ready for business!
You can also use it to compare files but I have not used it for that yet. The comparing of the directories can be done through various methods, default is ‘binary compare’ which takes quite some times but gives the most accurate results.

In my case I used the application (and I am not done yet) to compare two folders with movies. Directory A is roughly 500 GB and directory B is roughly 300 GB. There are a lot of duplicate movies and I want to do a nice clean up. Preferably move all movies from directory B to A so I have one master list and use increased free disk space for series.

First I changed the compare method to just use the date’s from the files themselves (creation, modified etc.). This method is bloody fast, but the software lists it as unsafe. Anyway instead of ~10 hours of comparing I went to ~10 seconds of comparing. Talk about time saving options! The results may not be 100% but I know my files well enough to not need the binary compare.

A list of folders is compiled and after each folder a green/red/black icon is shown to visualize if the folder is in that directory. Green means its there, Blacks is that it isn’t there, and red means kdiff3 wants to merge.
The first time I just kinda went for it and let kdiff3 automate everything! I just hit go and waited to see what was going to happen, not to much later an error occurred (after 6 files) I don’t recall the problem but it wasn’t a large one.
Kdiff3 went back to the folder overview and showed which folders had been moved and the status, including the error.

To my surprise the folders had been moved to the wrong directory, instead of files from B going to A its was directory A going to B. That’s what happens when users are too lazy to read the freaking manual OR your software isn’t user-friendly. In my case, I am just going to blame the software.. Alright not that big of a deal, in the initial screen I just switched the directories and redid the compare. This time I decided to do a bit more of a manual merge, in the folder overview you can manually move one item by using the f6 shortcut. This is a bit more time consuming but well worth it seeing as it gives full control.

My conclusion is that kdiff3 contains underutilized potential and with just the right amount of work it could become a very nice, professional software packet saving thousands of hours of work across the world.