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New: Visual Annotate 2.0 for ClearCase

As a developer who works with ClearCase, you know that it can often be difficult to find out important details such as where a change came from, who made it, when it was made, how it is different from other versions and how it affects the releases in production.
We are also aware of this challenge – and we have a solution for you: Visual Annotate for ClearCase. You can now download a full trial version here:
Download

To learn more about the current version, please follow this link: What’s new in Visual Annotate V1.5If you want to know what new benefits and features are coming in , read the following:

New benefits:
  • Save even more time on resolving bugs!
  • Improved performance
  • Bugs Impact Analysis that reduces your risks and tells you what releases in production are affected by these bugs
  • Audit Trail for regulatory compliance
New major features:

1) Embedded ‘diff’ and track changes – see them in one dashboard (!) for a better root cause analysis

New Visual Annotate dashboard, including Diff informationScreenshot: Annotate + Diff (click to enlarge)

Alongside the annotated code and data, you can use a new embedded ‘Diff’ that compares the code lines with any other version.
The “Code Viewer” column is the pivot.If you want to get the annotated info, you can see it in the left side of the code viewer;
If you want to get the ‘Diff’ info, you can see it in the right side of the code viewer

Annotated and Diff info 1

Screenshot: Focus on Annotated info alongside the code lines (click to enlarge)

Visual Annotate: Embedded Diff

Screenshot: Focus on ‘Diff’ info alongside the code lines (click to enlarge)

2) New particular information for each annotated code line: version’s comments, activity name [in UCM], source stream, target branches/stream, labels [baselines] and activity’s comments

You can see this data as a separate column or as part of the Tooltip that is displayed when you hover on the code.
For each code line, you can easily learn which baselines are put on it and what streams/branched it was delivered to. That is very useful when you find a bug on a particular code line, and you need to know where you have to fix it and where you should deliver the fixes to. Furthermore, if a label is attached to the broken code line, you can check if the label was delivered to a customer, which will help you analyze the impact of every bug and prioritize it accordingly. That’s very useful if working with Agile/ Scrum or applying Continuous Integration methodology.

New information: labels, baselines, target streams, source stream

(click to enlarge)

3) Jump to Next/Previous difference

Just like in your favorite code comparison tool, you may want to jump to the next difference. It could be a few lines below or even 100 lines below. Furthermore, we enable you to jump in many different ways: next difference in code, next difference by date, next difference by user (who made the change), or by stream/branch and by version.

Jump to Next/Previous difference

4) Show who really made the change and where it was really changed
Assuming you annotate a file from within integration stream/branch (and that’s OK), you get the version and username who changed it on the integration branch, but is that really all that you want to know? If that meets your needs – that’s  great. If not, Visual Annotate can explore and give you the version and user who really made that change. For instance:
By the given version tree, assume that you are annotating Form1.frm from the integration view that looks on \CompBL_Integration branch. In this case, you will see that all code lines which were made on version 1 (\CompBL_Integration\1) were really made on version 10 on \tg_CompBL_proj (\tg_CompBL_proj\10) and accordingly, all code lines which were made on version 2 (\CompBL_Integration\2) were really made on version 10 on \tg_CompBL_proj (\tg_CompBL_proj\11) :

ClearCase "Version Tree"

(click to enlarge)

We provide that information as part of the tooltip that is shown when hovering on the code

Who and where the change was REALLY made

(click to enlarge)We give you the highest flexibility by letting you customize a naming convention for integration stream/branch by regular expression.
If you want to make sure that you get a message when each version is released, please register for our “Visual Annotate” distribution list here: http://eepurl.com/g_50c
Feel free to give us your feedback. If you find some of these functionalities very important to you, let us know it.