This chapter explains how you can compare two editions of a component and identify changes made to a component. This chapter also explains how you can compare editions of two different configuration maps. To compare editions, you use an Application Changes Browser, Changes Browser, or Text Comparison Browser. These browsers are useful for the following:

The types of component editions and versions that you can compare include the following:

When comparing editions in one of the browsers, you often are comparing the state of your image to the state of the library. For example, when you browse the changes between an application edition in your image and its corresponding edition in the library, you are comparing the class editions and versions that are in the your image with the class versions that are released to the application edition.

If a component's code has not changed from one edition to the next, only the time stamps of the editions enable you to distinguish between them. The browser's panes are empty. Thus, the browsers list only code changes; they do not list changes to comments, notes, method categories, and similar non-code items.

After you have a browser open on code changes, you can easily find changes to components. Simply select the next differences push button to highlight code changes in a side-by-side display of editions. To track your progress through changes browsers, select the Remove From List menu option to filter out components that you no longer need to inspect.