Project Files

WinXMerge can save a comparison’s paths and options as a WinMerge-compatible .WinMerge project file, and reopen it later. WinXMerge doesn’t restore sessions across launches, so this is the only way to get back to a saved comparison.

Opening and Saving

• File → Open Project… opens a .WinMerge file and starts a comparison for each <paths> entry it contains, one tab per entry
• File → Save Project… saves the current tab only, prompting for a destination
• From the command line: winxmerge project.WinMerge — only when it’s the sole positional argument; the .WinMerge extension is matched case-insensitively

What’s Read and Written

Element	Meaning
left / right	The two compared paths
middle	The 3-way base file
white-spaces	0 = compare all, 1 = ignore whitespace changes, 2 = ignore all whitespace
ignore-case, ignore-blank-lines, ignore-carriage-return-diff	Text compare toggles
subfolders	Recurse into subfolders during a folder compare
compare-method	Folder compare method, 0–6 (Full/Quick/Binary/Date/SizeDate/Size/Existence); WinMerge’s method 7, Image, has no equivalent and is ignored

Elements WinXMerge has no use for — filter, *-desc, *-readonly, window-type, table-*, unpacker/prediffer, other ignore-*, hidden-items, and anything unrecognized — are read and discarded; they never cause an open to fail.

Behavior Notes

• An option missing from the file leaves the current setting untouched, the same as WinMerge; a value outside its valid range is likewise ignored.
• subfolders/compare-method change the app-wide folder compare settings — same as the /m command line flag — so they affect later folder comparisons in other tabs too, and are what gets saved on exit. Text compare options apply only to the tab being opened.
• subfolders = 0 limits the recursion depth to the top level only; subfolders = 1 restores unlimited depth, but only if the depth was previously limited to the top level (a deeper custom limit is left alone). Saving writes the reverse mapping.
• Relative paths resolve against the project file’s own folder. Unlike WinMerge, environment variables in paths aren’t expanded. Saved paths are always absolute.
• Several <paths> entries open several tabs. An entry missing its left or right path, or a 3-way entry where any of the three paths is a folder (3-way folder compare isn’t supported), is skipped; the status bar reports how many entries opened and skipped.
• A project file that fails to parse as XML shows an error in the status bar instead of opening.