WinMerge

I must start with a shout-out to the makers of WinMerge. It is an Open Source tool that, at it's simplest, allows users to compare file content as well as folder content. At NYAHSA, once we starting using WinMerge, we quickly realized that we had found a tool that would streamline our production deployments. Here's just a sampling of what WinMerge allows us to do:

• compare elements of our test environment against their production counterparts;
• see which files/folders are on test and not on production (and vice-versa);
• make a backup copy of the test objects we're deploying, as well as the production objects we're replacing. And WinMerge creates the folder structure automatically when making the backup copies.

We're just now learning more and more of the incredible power of WinMerge. If you're looking for a utility like this, look no further.