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Programmer's File Editor With Change Tracking?
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?"
In the open-source world you edit your text file, finish for a bit, save it, and check it back into your favorite form of source control. You can then look at the diffs between various revisions.
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You don't solve that by changing editors. You solve that by standardizing on a version control system and using it. For example, you could stick a Subversion server somehwere on your network, then install TortoiseSVN on your client machines. When you edit the file, you commit it with a log message of why you made the changes.
This is infinitely preferable to forcing all of your developers to use one specific editor (which is the universal holy war among programmers), when all of them will be half-assed at best when compared to real version control.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Are the overlords retarded? Just use source control (svn?). "Track changes" is evil.
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?"
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.
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In addition to joining the chorus that will suggest you use version control, I'll put in a suggestion to write a custom tool to view and make specific changes to the file. Multiple users editing *data* files by hand, with no validation, is silly.
if your business users have to edit 32MB text files by hand, someone is a moron.
Someone didn't know what they were doing in the first place.
Change the process to make sense.
Perhaps those "files" should actually be in a database. SQL makes automatic manipulation quite easy.
They're using their grammar skills there.
I'll echo the same sentiments as everybody else... use source control. In addition, you're asking for the impossible. Word Processors can do "change tracking" within a file because the file contains more stuff than simply the text that you type in. Based on your description, the file you're talking about is simple text data, and has no provisions for storing "previous versions" directly within the text file. Where were you expecting this additional information to reside? And if it's in the same file, you would also have to change whatever tools you're using to process that file to be aware of all of this new (and to that tool, useless) information within the file.
I just wrote one for you, and it is even using your favorite editor:
cp $1 $1.bak
`$EDITOR $1`
diff $1.bak $1
Many of the Slashdotters actually pay for the opportunity to, among other things, answer questions like that. If you do not derive satisfaction from doing it, just step aside, no one is forcing you to post.
I can assure you, the best way to get rid of dragons is to have one of your own.
Sounds like Wiki may be the best... It is easy enough to split the document into sections, which can be edited concurrently. It keeps the history available. And the format is (almost) text.
Pick MediaWiki (the same software, that powers WikiPedia) or any other implementation (some may be easier to operate on a small LAN, and/or be able to export pure text, etc.)
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
When you don't know how to do something, where do you go? I usually got to Google first and look around. Sometimes I find something, sometimes I don't. When I can't find anything via Google, where then do you turn? A co-worker? A friend? Maybe an online community of people who would know? The latter sounds like the most promising to me.
A company isn't concerned with how you find the answer (provided you come by it legally), they just want an answer as soon as possible. The faster, the cheaper the solution man-hours-wise.
I wouldn't be surprised if you've posted for help on an online forum or asked a friend for help with something. It's no different. It's all part of research.
Automatic file versioning built right into the file system! Problem solved! Next!
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He points out that he has had a look himself, but he doesn't seem to have heard of version tracking software, or cpmsoders it overly complex for their needs. Personally I've never used any myself, but it sounds about right for this type of task.
which is totally what she said
"not to sound like a..." TOO LATE!
Why complain? Too many people on slashdot are whiners! If you don't want to help, don't respond! That is the beauty of "open source". Help if you want or don't.
I have been programming for over 30 years and am considered a guru by my peers. But I know my limitations. For example I would not touch a SAP project with out help, because I have no experience.
Maybe the solution for everyone, is to have a category for "I need help" that people like you can tell slashdot not to show on your home page.
For those who are not observant: this comment is recursive and sarcastic.
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I seem to recall Eclipse saves your edit history
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
a new file editor that will track changes made to a file (as a word processor does)
A large part of the 'as a word processor does' feature is that the file format itself supports it - all the changes are saved right along side each other and the word processor picks and chooses what to display to you at any particular point in time. If your file format does not support change tracking, you need to look at external change tracking solutions such as SVN/CVS or something on the file system level.
> cpmsoders
I think you need to move your keyboard about this much (___) to the left. The scary thing is it made perfect sense!
I believe SlickEdit now supports change tracking directly. Not sure how well it works with plain text data files, but it is supported on several platforms, has hooks for version control integration, and so on.
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It's not quite as straightforward as that, but there's a valid objection there, and I take the point.
Of course, the real problem is the idea that users manually editing a 32MB file on a regular basis is at all a sensible idea.
When I can't find anything via Google, where then do you turn?
You could ask Slashdot or some other forum, but provide an example of a Google query that you thought was promising but didn't turn up anything relevant. This way, others can see that you at least tried, and people can use why the queries didn't work as a starting point for conversation.
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).
Apparently your Overlords' heads have some fault code and need to be debugged.
Revision tracking is accomplished with revision tracking software.
You may think it is easier to just do what they are telling you to do, but in the long run it is not. They need to understand the difference between editing and revision tracking. If they do not, they will not be getting what they are looking for.
There are a variety of methods for tracking revisions, from diff files to Subversion. Word processors store delta histories in the document, which is a poor place to store such things because it is insecure and liable to corruption.
Then again, if you're doing hand edits to 32M text files, you probably are working in a company with less comprehension of information science than the City of San Francisco (alas, my beloved home city, but boy do they have their heads up their nether regions).
Seriously - you may not like this answer, but it is the only correct one. Fix their understanding of revision tracking.
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Oops! That's quite imcjaracjterostoc of me... my apologies.
which is totally what she said
When I was young, we used RCS and we liked it! As the state of the art changes, so do the requirements to stay at the top. It's possible that SVN 1.5 qualifies as real version control by modern standards - I'll find out when it reaches my somewhat conservative distro - but previous versions have poor support for merging.
I'm also rather unhappy at SVN this week because it managed to get itself in a horribly confused state in which it told me I needed to run svn cleanup to fix some locks, but running svn cleanup just got me an error message saying that I needed to run svn cleanup to fix the locks. I ended up having to delete and do a clean checkout, and was not impressed.
As to the accusations of Linus fanboydom (yours is the second), the only reason I mentioned git is that I used it in my previous job and it worked well. I could equally have said Mercurial or BitKeeper, but since I have no experience with those I can't really recommend them.
If his job involves finding solutions, then that's just it: he needs to find solutions. He doesn't need to INVENT them.
Oh, and unless you invented source control and diffs, or stumbled upon them in some lost dungeon, you probably found out about them by asking people too, meaning you're just as "bad" as him.
I'm guessing the point of having change tracking is so that the Overlord can review and approve the changes. In that case, maybe UltraCompare(http://www.ultraedit.com/products/ultracompare.html) is what you're looking for?
Keep a copy of the original file and make a diff. Am I missing something?
--- You are in a little twisty maze of comments, all different.
well considering many of us here are at work, we are getting paid for it.
Actually, it only appears to keep a full copy for the most recent versions, and repacking the repository ('git gc') will delta-encode everything as necessary. At least, that's how I understand the way it's described on the git wiki: http://git.or.cz/gitwiki/Git?highlight=(delta)|(compress)
And here's one that will track previous changes as well as well as preventing edits by two people at once...
$ cat edit.sh
#!/bin/sh
co -l $1
$EDITOR $1
ci $1
co $1
1) Obviously never heard of version control like (CVS, SVN, etc.). This is excusable, as setting up and keeping with your very own SVN repo isn't the top of people's lists, and it's entirely possible to not have heard of such a beast.
2) Accepting the commandment of "thou shalt manually wade through gobs of data in a text file means he's no programmer. This is also perfectly fine, but means he's not the right person to be changing this file anyway.
3) Is under the impression that revision history could conceivably be hidden within said plain text file, implying the OP doesn't understand basic file formats, which confirms that he is not merely the wrong person but absolutely the last person you want manually mucking with your data files.
Therefore...
My suggestion: Forward the request to your IT department (or rent a geek).
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It's not "unusual", it's simply nonsense.
If your business process requires non-techie users to edit and share 32M-sized textfiles regularly then your business process is broken. The whole approach is broken beyond repair, the obvious solution would be to build some kind of frontend for the users.