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Did you know? Some facts about Visual Annotate


Over the last months we released two versions.
It’s now time to take a benchmark and let you know some interesting facts how it can help you with ClearCase.

1. You can easily hover on the code and discover for each line which version it was checked in; who checked-in that line; when; what activity (feature or fix) it was made on; relevant comments and more.

If you integrate ClearCase with ClearQuest (UCM enabled), you automatically get the relevant record!

Watch a video that demonstrates this feature.

2. You can show who really made the change and where it was actually changed.

Assuming you annotate a file from within an integration stream/branch (which is fine), you will get the version and username that changed it on the integration branch, but is that really the user and context who made the change? In many cases, you will see that ‘integrator’ user made the change and it was made under ‘delivery’ activity. Is that the information that you’re really looking for?

Visual Annotate can explore further (in reverse \ backward mode) to give you the version and user who really made the change. Click to learn more.

3. Diff and track changes

You can track changes and annotation – in one screen! This helps you to get a better root cause analysis.

Click to see examples.



4. Full traceability

Visual Annotate is integrated with R&D Reporter (https://www.almtoolbox.com/rnd), another add-on tool that enables you to get development status reports and analytics.

Together they enable you to see the whole picture and get full traceability, from the project level down to the code line.

To learn about R&D Reporter‘s latest release, please email us.

5. Change Impact Analysis

Visual Annotate performs a change impact analysis to track all software version affected (labels or UCM baselines) by each specific line of code. Developers can quickly understand the purpose and impact of each line of code and see the labels and baselines it affects. For instance, if you find a bug on line no. 621, you can easily find out which labels (releases) this line is part of, letting you know which labels (and branches) you now have to fix.

Read a success story on this issue.

Removed code lines

6. Visual Annotate can show you removed code lines and functions that were present in one or more versions along the line of descent, but which do not appear in the specified version. To see an example, click here.

7. What one ClearCase ClearQuest Product Manager says about Visual Annotate:

“I am continually impressed by the ability of GoMidjets to fill a gap between the core functionality provided by ClearCase and the needs of our customers. Visual Annotate is just one of those cool tools provided by GoMidjets that can help ClearCase users easily understand the history of changes to a file, line by line.”

See on Linkedin.