Java Reference
In-Depth Information
two versions to your local files. If there are conflicts,
IDEA
provides a handy merge
tool (discussed later in this chapter) to assist in setting things straight.
8.2.5
Viewing change history
An important benefit of using a version control system is the ability to see
changes made to a file between versions. This is often an important debugging
tool, because “What's changed?” is often the first question asked when something
that used to work fine suddenly doesn't.
The
CVS
| Show History
(
Alt+H
) command reviews previous versions of the
selected file. This brings up the history browser shown in figure 8.14. For each
version, you can see the date it was created, the author, and any comments added
when they committed the file. The columns can be sorted by clicking the head-
ings. Throughout this section, we'll highlight the actions you can perform from
the History view.
The line marked with bold font denotes the version with which you've last syn-
chronized (updated or committed), and it isn't always the topmost version avail-
able in the repository. So, this view lets you be aware of how close or far you are
from the most recent repository state.
Viewing the change history of a selection
A variation of the
Show History
command,
Show History for Selection
lets you
inspect the changes made to a given selection of code over time. It combines the
version history list with
IDEA
's diff viewer, giving you an easy way to review how
previous revisions of a file affected the currently selected block of code, as shown
in figure 8.15.
Figure 8.14 The History view in the CVS tool window gives an overview of all the
changes made to a file since its creation.
