Re: Diff Tools

<eric.cameron@itt.com> wrote
> I've encountered a documented problem within Visual C++, that the
> same code will produce different sized executables, when compiled at
> different times or on different machines.
>
> Now, the problem is, my company wants to be able to see the
> differences between these two executables. If they are just time/date
> stamps, that's fine, but if there is other stuff (memory contents,
> etc) there may be problems, and we have to be able to determine that.
> We'd like a more programmatic way of doing this then using a hex
> editor, but any suggestions are helpful.


Same sized executables differing in a few bytes are a time code. You
can see the difference using the DOS command line fc utility (file
compare).


Different size executables are a different problem. These are likely
to involve different compilation or linkage switches, different
library versions, or, to be quite frank, differences in source code.
You can't be sure that these really represent the same code and your
company is correct to be concerned.

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