I keep a general watch on what is changing so I know where features are schedule wise, what engineers are working on, and also so I can spot check for appropriate solutions to some of our thornier problems (no bubble sorts please!). I usually do this by doing a compare of my current source tree against a snapshot of the last public build. I then organize it by staff.
Here is the typical two pane diff view:
Trouble is, I’m traveling and my laptop has a small screen. Notice how the rightpane text is cut off? Also, when I look at diffs I’m usually just looking at the right side. Fortunately, Understand 2.0 has a way to show just the right side, see all the text and make efficient use of my smaller screen. Just hit the
button and you will see only the right side.
Now I can see the right side, all my source and still get a very good idea of the nature of the changes: If I want to get a hint of what was over on the left side I can either click on the arrow again, or hover over it and see the left side text in a hover text balloon. Finally, by looking at the shape of the diff overlay I can tell what kind of change it was:
– big to a single line is a deletion
– small line to a bigger region is an insertion
– non single line to non-single line (region) is a change.
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