Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Programmer's File Editor With Change Tracking?

Posted by kdawson on from the and-a-pony dept.

passionfingers writes "My business users regularly have to tweak large (>32MB text) data files manually. Overlords charged with verifying the aforementioned changes have requested that the little people be provided with a new file editor that will track changes made to a file (as a word processor does). I have scouted around online for such an animal, but to no avail — even commercial offerings like UltraEdit32 don't offer such a feature. Likewise on the OSS side of the fence, where I expected a Notepad++ plugin or the like, it appears that the requirements to a) open a file containing a large volume of text data and b) track changes to the data, are mutually exclusive. Does anyone in the Slashdot community already have such a beast in their menagerie? Perhaps there is there a commercial offering I've missed, or could someone possibly point me to their favorite (stable) OSS project that might measure up?"

7 of 286 comments (clear)

  1. diff -Nrau by red_dragon · · Score: 4, Informative

    What's so bad about diff that you're not using it already? Certainly it would be a better choice for dealing with multiple text files: make a working copy (which can be an entire directory tree), do your changes on the working copy, and then run diff against the original and working copies. And I bet that there's an Emacs mode for that too.

    --
    In Soviet Russia, Jesus asks: "What Would You Do?"
  2. CVS/SVN? by Jonah+Hex · · Score: 5, Informative

    I understand you want an all-in-one, however I believe that most "programming" editors can hook into some sort of change management program. I use one locally with my AutoIT3 scripts and the SCiTE editor, every time I compile it asks me for a "changes/reason" and enters that into my own local source management.

    SCiTE

    SCiTE for AutoIT with screenshots

    CVS/SVN wrapper for SCiTE with screenshots and instructions

    Jonah HEX

    --
    Horror & SciFi Erotic Nudes
  3. Re:Version control by Shaitan+Apistos · · Score: 5, Informative

    Some editors, netbeans for example, even have visual cues in the margin indicating what you've changed from the svn revision you've checked out since your last commit.

  4. Um, Eclipse? by Progman3K · · Score: 5, Informative

    I seem to recall Eclipse saves your edit history

    --
    I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
  5. Re:Simple, switch to VMS! by UnderCoverPenguin · · Score: 4, Informative

    If the users are using Linux, there is also ext3cow, which was discussed on /. (http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/02/0413253&from=rss), the newly announced Tux3 (http://lkml.org/lkml/2008/7/23/257), Wayback (http://wayback.sourceforge.net/) and others.

    --
    Don't try to out wierd me, three-eyes. I get stranger things than you, free with my breakfast cereal. --Zaphod Beeblebr
  6. Emacs - ~/.saves directory by JBrow · · Score: 5, Informative
    Aside from using version control, I also have Emacs set up with an extensive save history. My settings are:

    ; backup
    (setq make-backup-files t)
    (setq
    backup-by-copying t
    backup-directory-alist '(("." . "~/.saves"))
    delete-old-versions t
    kept-new-versions 6
    kept-old-versions 2
    version-control t)

    --
    --- You are in a little twisty maze of comments, all different.
  7. Re:That's not fair by Oroki · · Score: 4, Informative

    Just scroll to the bottom of the page; all the answers are there.