Beyond Compare 4 for LINUX
Release Notes

CONTENTS
1) SUPPORTED FEATURES
2) REQUIREMENTS
3) INSTALLATION
4) CONTEXT MENUS
5) NOTES
6) Registering

SUPPORTED FEATURES

Basic Functionality

Beyond Compare for Linux currently supports directory and file comparisons as well as the standard copying, deleting, renaming, merging, and syncing features provided by the Windows version.

KDE Theming

Beyond Compare for Linux supports the theme and styling features for Qt3. KDE, a popular desktop environment, allows for customization of Qt's styling options. However, most current KDE distros use Qt4 which does not configure Qt3 applications automatically. If your distro is Qt4 based you will need to use qtconfig for qt3 to change the styling.

Beyond Compare for Linux will run under other desktop environments, such as Gnome and XFCE, but will not follow the styling engine.  However, qtconfig (for qt3) can be used to changed styling.


REQUIREMENTS

1) Qt3 runtime library (libqt-mt.so.3 included in this installer)
	Beyond Compare for Linux was written using the Qt3 widgetset.
	Support for KDE styles and themes is an added advantage for
	this route.
2) libqtc.so library file (included in this installer)
	This file is required for mapping the Qt3 library calls to
	Pascal functions and procedures, from which Beyond Compare
	is written.
3) Compatible Linux Distributions

  Compatible with no tweaks required:
  - Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, 6, 7 (32 & 64 bit)
  - Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, 13,10, 14.04 LTS
  - CentOS 5, 6, 7 (32 & 64 bit)
  - Fedora 19, 20
  - openSUSE 11 (32 & 64 bit)
  - Debian 6, 7

INSTALLATION

0) install libraries if required

The .deb and .rpm packages are set up to install any required dependencies automatically when a package manager tool such as yum, apt-get, etc are used.  Therefore if a package management tool is used for installation no further action will need to be taken.  However, if rpm or dpkg tools are used or if Beyond Compare is installed using the .tar.gz package then dependencies will not be handled automatically and the use will need handle the dependencies.

 - 32 Bit Distro -

Beyond Compare specific libraries are now included in the distribution packages (.tar.gz, .deb, and .rpm).  All other libraries needed are standard and will already be included in your distro when installing on a 32 bit distro.

 - 64 Bit Distro -

When installing on a 64 bit distro ia32 compatibility libraries will need to be installed.

On deb based distros these can be installed as the following packages: ia32-libs

On rpm based distros there is no one package that captures all needed 32 bit libraries.  The following list of individual i386 (or i586, i686, etc) packages will need to be installed:

	expat
	fontconfig
	freetype
	glibc
	libgcc
	libICE
	libSM
	libstdc++
	libxcb
	libX11
	libXau
	libXcursor
	libXext
	libXfixes
	libXft
	libXinerama
	libXrandr
	libXrender
	zlib

If you use a package manager (such as yum) that handles dependency checking and installation you can narrow the list down to:

	fontconfig
	libSM
	libstdc++
	libXcursor
	libXft
	libXinerama
	libXrandr
	zlib

The package manager will install all others as required dependencies.

NOTE: MAKE SURE TO INSTALL THE 32 bit VERSIONS (I.E. i386, i586, or i686).
With some package management applications this will require that you enable search and show of "non-native" packages.

1) extract files.
> tar zxvf BCompare_*.tar.gz

2) run install.sh
> cd bcompare-*
> ./install.sh

The default location when installing as root is "/usr." If the user does not have root privileges, Beyond Compare will be installed to the users home directory by default.

The default installation directory can be overridden with the --prefix=[DIR] option. This is also documented with ./install.sh --help.

3) Run Beyond Compare
> $HOME/bin/bcompare  (non-root install)
> /usr/bin/bcompare   (root install)


CONTEXT MENUS

- KDE 3.5 users

Context menus 'Select Left Side to Compare' and 'Compare To' now work in Konqueror. Look under the Actions Menu when right clicking on a file or folder.

- KDE 4.0, Gnome, XFCE users

Contect Menu extensions for Konqueror, Nautilus, and Thunar are included and installed.

These extensions will place file selection options in the main menus of the file managers.  Options for the added menu items can be found in the Beyond Compare / Tools / Options top page.

The Context menu extensions will be installed as part of the Beyond Compare installation process but can be removed or re-installed manually.  The extension .so files reside in

   $BC_LIB/lib/beyondcompare/ext

where $BC_LIB is $HOME or /usr depending on root or user installation.

To install the extensions place the appropriate .so in:

	/usr/lib/kde4/						(KDE4/Konqueror)
	/usr/lib/nautilus/extensions2-0/	(Gnome/Nautilus)
	/usr/lib/thunarx-1/					(XFCE/Thunar)

For KDE the file bcompare_ext_konq.desktop also needs to be placed in:

	/usr/share/kde4/services/

For GNOME, all instances of nautilus must be stopped ('pkill nautilus') and then restarted before the context menu extension is loaded.

Also on Gnome, default behaviour is to not enable menu icons.  Icons are installed for Beyond Compare menu extensions and make it much easier to use the added menu items.  Menu Icons for nautilus can be enabled through the menus as:

  System > Preferences > Appearance > Interface > Show icons in menus

or through the gnome configuration tool (gconf) as

  gconftool-2 --type bool --set /desktop/gnome/interface/menus_have_icons true



NOTES

- Check for Updates now supports proxies. Set the "http_proxy" environment variable to have Beyond Compare use a proxy for updates. To set the variable from the Bash shell, use the command:

	export http_proxy="http://server"

- You can alternatively set your path variable for calling Beyond Compare.


REGISTERING

- To register for a single user, select Help > Enter Key and paste in your license.

- To register for a single user without running BC4, save your license key in the text file

	"~username/.beyondcompare/BC4Key.txt".

- To register for all users, save your license key in the text file

	"/etc/BC4Key.txt".
