dotPeek
 
Get dotPeek

Compare assemblies, NuGet packages, and more

Last modified: 21 March 2024

dotPeek allows you to compare two assemblies, NuGet packages, archives, or folders. Each comparison is presented as a top-level node in the dedicated Assembly Diff tool window; you can expand this node and see differences in the assembly structure right away, and in addition to that, you can double-click types, members, and other elements to see a text-based comparison in the specified diff tool.

dotPeek: Assembly comparison node in the Assembly Diff tool window

Elements within the comparison node (types, members, files) are highlighted in different colors with the following meanings:

  • Green — the element is present in the second assembly and absent in the first assembly.

  • Red — the element is present in the first assembly and absent in the second assembly.

  • Violet — the element is present in both assemblies, and it has differences.

When you double-click an element with differences, the comparison opens in an external diff tool. If the diff tool is not specified, a dialog will appear where you can specify it:

dotPeek: Select Diff Tool dialog

If any of the following applications are installed on your machine, dotPeek will detect them and suggest using one of them as the diff tool: Visual Studio, KDiff, Beyond Compare, WinMerge, P4Merge, and Meld. Alternatively, specify the path to a diff tool and command line arguments to open the compared documents. The documents are referred to as $1 and $2. The selected tool and its arguments will be saved for later comparisons, and you can change it on the Diff page of dotPeek options Ctrl+Alt+S.

To finish comparing assemblies, select the comparison node and press Delete or right-click it and choose Remove Item from List.