I’ve covered making Snapshots from the Current Database and by checking out source to an alternate location in earlier posts. Now I’m going to tell you the EASY way to do it…. Just use TrackBack.
Assuming you have had TrackBack B443 or later monitoring your source trees, you can recreate the state of any monitored directory at any time. This includes file modification, file existance, file renaming, everything.
The Problem – I don’t have a snapshot for the time period.
I’m trying to see if a bug reported has been fixed. I know the area and I know we made changes for a similar bug, I just need to see if the changes cover the situation the user reports. He is using B453… my source is at B456+local changes. I’d like to easily compare the area affected between B453 and now.
I will need to grab the source for B453, build a snapshot, and compare the “Managed DB API” architectural area for changes.
Getting The Source – Piece of Cake
First I choose “Change->Make a Snapshot->From Any Point in Time”
If this is your first snapshot of this project it will caution you that Project Portability settings cannot be changed after making a snapshot. Don’t worry about that. Just click through it.
Now I’m basically asked “When”, using th the calendar pulldown I specify the 23rd at 1700 hours (end of programming day):
Understand and TrackBack then work together to build up a preview of what the new snapshot will contain:
The first box is files in common. The second is files that existed in B453 but not in the current source. The third is files that exist now but didn’t back then.
This looks right to me. I accept it.
It then grabs the source needed for the snapshot from the TrackBack history and starts parsing the snapshot:
Elapsed time to start… about 1 second. I didn’t have to use SVN, I didn’t have to make a directory, I just need to know what TIME I wanted to compare against.
Snapshot Made – now find the changes
I could, and usually would, just compare all of my current database against the snapshot I made for B453. But in this case I know the area I want to check.
So I’ll choose “Change->Compare Snapshots” and specify the particular area I want to search changes for:
I’m then presented with the changes to that area and I check them out:
After perusing them I decide the bug is not fixed and I make a note to talk to [new]Rob, the owner of that code, tomorrow to make sure he gets this one fixed before the next build.
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