CompareRevisions

Created: October 05, 2017 | Updated: October 06, 2017 | Applies to versions: 18.0, 18.1, 19.0, 19.1, 20.0, 20.1 and 20.2

Parent page: VersionControl Commands

The following pre-packaged resources, derived from this base command, are available:

Compare Selected Revisions

Applied Parameters: None

Summary

This command is used to compare two revisions of the same document. A valuable asset to working with Version Control is the ability to compare historical revisions of design files, which is provided by Altium Designer's built-in Difference Comparator and accessed from the Storage Manager panel. When used in conjunction with the Differences panel, a logical or graphical comparison can be made between VCS revisions while interactively exploring the affected objects.

Access

With the required document selected in the Files region of the Storage Manager panel, and the panel configured in its Classic View, this command can be accessed by selecting two revisions of the document in the VCS Revisions region, right-clicking, and choosing the Compare command from the context menu.

Switch between views for the panel using the corresponding command from a region's right-click context menu - either Switch to Classic View (from the Time line region), or Switch to Combined View (from the VCS Revisions or Local History regions).

Use

First ensure that the required document is selected in the Files region of the Storage Manager panel. Then select the two revisions that you wish to compare, in the VCS Revisions region of the panel.

After launching the command, a comparison is made between the two revisions, the result of which depends on the document type:

For schematic or PCB (design or library) documents, a graphical comparison is made and the differences detected listed in the Differences panel. With the two versions of the document open side by side in the design editor window, you can peruse the differences graphically. Clicking on a top-level folder for a detected difference will highlight that difference on both documents simultaneously.
For text-based ASCII documents, the CompareForm dialog will appear, showing a graphical 'diff' of the two versions of the document. The chosen documents are displayed side by side. The dialog is for comparison only - no modifications to a loaded document can be made. Through color-coding, the dialog highlights the various differences between the two document versions - lines added (pink), lines modified (green) and lines deleted (blue). A summary of changes and color-code legend is presented at the bottom-left of the dialog.