Source File Compare/Merge Editor

To compare/merge source physical file members:

• In the Remote Systems Explorer open the context menu (right click) of a source physical file member. This is the source file that will be opened in the left pane.
• Select menu item "iSphere Source Member Compare Editor".

Set the Mode for the compare:

• Use "Open for browse" or "Open for edit" to specify how the left pane of the compare opens.
• Use "Don't consider date" or "Consider date" to specify if the date field in each source line will be used in the compare.
• Use "Don't ignore case" of "Ignore case" to specify if the compare should be case sensitive of insensitive.
• Use "Two way compare" to compare two source members.
• Use "Three way compare" to include an ancestor to the source in the right pane.
  

 

Note that in the "Left" section the name of the source member for the left pane is specified and cannot be changed.

 

 

 

In the "Right" section the Library, File and Member have been defaulted to the "Left" values.
Change as needed to specify the source member that is to be compared to the source member in the "Left" section.

 

 

Click the [OK] button to start the compare.

 

The compare tab opens, showing the differences.

Use buttons in the top right corner buttons to move from change to change, and to copy lines from the left pane to the right pane. (Hover over each button for help text.)

Today there are a couple of restriction to know about:

Note: The date of all source lines is set to the current date, when "Don't consider date" is selected and the member is saved from the iSphere Compare/Merge editor. This problem cannot be fixed for WDSC 7.0 and RDi 8.0, due to restrictions in the Eclipse compare support.

Note: It is impossible to exclude a range of columns from source compare, due to restrictions in the Eclipse compare support.

See these links for more details:

Two Members

If two members are selected at once, the first member is the Left member and the second one is the Right member.

The members can be switched with the switch member button located between the "Left" and "Right" member sections:

Three or More Members

This is a special case where you want to compare members of the same name in different library or source file. For example, comparing members at the development level with those in production. You have to enter the specifications in the right pane only once.

Consider this example where we want to compare three members in a development library with the same three members in the production library.

We have highlighted the three members in the RSE view, right clicked, and clicked "iSphere Source Member Compare Editor".

In the "Left" section the member is set to *SELECTED and cannot be changed. This means that it will be replaced successively by the member names that have been selected in the RSE view, and each will be compared to the same member in the "Right" section.

In the "Right" section the Connection, Library or File may be changed, but the name of the right member is set to *LEFT and cannot be changed.

To compare to the production library, we set the "File" field to ISP_PROD and click [OK]. A compare is run for each selected member and a tab opens for each member where there are differences. In this example, there are changes only in DEMO1 and DEMO3 so there are two compare tabs. There are no changes in DEMO2.

Note: The information message that pops up when there are no differences between the members is part of the Eclipse compare framework and cannot be disabled with the current Eclipse support.

The iSphere compare editor can be started from the context menu of a Lpex editor. Select Source -> Compare... to do so. Please notice that:

• There is no edit option when the compare editor is started from an Lpex editor.

The iSphere compare editor can be started from the iSphere menu of the main menu bar. Select iSphere -> Compare Source Members to do so.

When the iSphere compare editor is started from an Lpex editor with a source member loaded from an i Project, then the following additional rules are enforced:

• There is no edit option for i Project members.
• When the i Project member does not have sequence numbers and date fields, the Consider date option is not available and sequence numbers and last changed dates are not displayed at all.