files-community / files-community/Files

Feature: Folder Merging Options (With GUI)

Open
#9,803 4 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub
area - file operations
Dominant language
C#
Stars
45.4k
Forks
2.9k
Avg merge
19h 7m
Merged PRs (30d)
62

Description

### What's the Problem?

Explorer's solution for merging two folders is unintuitive and difficult, requiring the folders to have the same exact name, requiring user input on conflicts, doesn't give many details about the merge, etc.

### Solution/Idea

A visual folder-merging "action" that allows the user to select two folders and pick from various merging options, such as:

- Two Way Merge - Copies the differing contents from both folders resulting in two identical folders after the merge is complete.
- Mirror Merge - Copy folder content from source folder two destination folder, keeping shared content, removing differing content, and copying missing content.
- Update Merge - Copies missing or newer content from source folder to destination folder, leaving differing content intact.

This could be accompanied with a interface that displays transfer information like transfer statistics (amount of files to be copied, transfer size, etc.) or a layout of both folders indicating which files/folders will be copied over.

### Alternatives

Explorer is hardly capable of anything similar, requiring hacky folder renames and countless other actions. E.g. two folders with the same name to be transferred into the same folder to do a "merge"

In my experience, this can be unreliable in general.

### Priorities

| This proposal must: |

- Add an option to conflicts dialog to merge source files with target files

| This proposal should: |

- Add a menu option to the extended context menu (when holding the shift key) to two-way merge between two different directories. This action will display an open file dialog to select the other directory.

| This proposal won't: |

- Make you coffee?
- Replace traditional copy and paste.

### Files Version

_No response_

### Windows Version

Edition Windows 11 Pro Insider Preview Version 22H2 Installed on ‎8/‎18/‎2022 OS build 25182.1010 Experience Windows Feature Experience Pack 1000.25182.1010.0

### Comments

_No response_

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Assessment

This issue has not been assessed yet.

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.