Please add support to compare binary files with external tool

[miguelsguedeshpp]

This extension is great, but would be even better if we could use an external tool to view differences in binary files.

Thanks!

[damhau]

Do you have a proposition on how to do it, you mean not using the builtin diff of vs code but another tool ? Do you have an example ?

[wildengrpro]

I would find this useful as well. Although, I might adjust the issue slightly and just ask for the ability to open the binary file in an external tool or application. If it's possible to also open the previous version of the file in this process, then that may fit the bill for "comparing" binary files. In the case of PDFs, something like diff-pdf may be useful for comparing, but requires that both files get passed to it, so the extension would have to handle that, which would likely be more challenging.

Focusing initially on just opening in an external tool/application, there is an extension for VSCode that is call 'Open in External App':
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=YuTengjing.open-in-external-app
https://github.com/tjx666/open-in-external-app

I mention that one because, although I don't know much about coding extensions for VSCode, in a cursory search, it seems that it may be possible to trigger or call either commands or other extensions.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/41559471/is-it-possible-to-call-commands-between-extensions-in-vscode

[miguelsguedeshpp]

Apologies, I missed the previous question.
I use external tools to compare binary files, mostly Matlab and Excel files. I've created my own diff tool that calls the tools with the right commands from VS code,

git config:

So that is what I was thinking, that based on file extension, we could define a command to run, to call an external application.
And the main advange for me in using this VS Extension, is that I can see what files are affected by the Pull Request, and I could compare directly what is currently in the target branch with what we are proposing to merge. Currently the only way for me to do this is by pulling the target branch into my local machine, and checking out the last commit of the branch we're merging.

Hope that is clear - please let me know if otherwise.

Thanks!!