Introduction

Software Engineering is a complex discipline and building large software projects in teams is a difficult process. One process that is integral to software engineering is the comparison of source code revisions.

Many utilities exist to lessen the burden of this task, but they do not show the functional differences between revisions that are really at the core of the task. The approach taken by SourceDiff to solve this problem is to compare source revisions after removing any non-functional parts.

The main benefit is that we can minimize the amount information a developer must process to understand what has changed in a source code revision. By reducing the burden of comparing source revisions, software engineers will be able to spend more time on productive tasks instead.

About SourceDiff

SourceDiff is an open-source program that was initially developed as an honours project at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada.

The initial development provided a functional prototype which could then be released and built upon to create a useable and worthwhile program.

Currently it supports comparison between Java source code as well as XML files. It is built in a way that allows anyone to plug in their own extensions to allow other types of files to be compared.

The display is also pluggable if you want to develop your own display to show differences.

If you have comments or suggestions, bug reports or feature requests, please use the forums to express yourself.