Change Analysis

The information tool can track changes in an Eiffel system or external resources side, and potentially affected items on either side are listed.

Major Features

• Affected target: List of elements of the Eiffel system that would be affected by a change in external resources.
• Affected source: List of external resources that might be affected by changes in the Eiffel system.
• Change acknowledgement: Acknowledgement of the changes which will be ignored with no further actions.

Typical Work Flows

Affected external resources caused by a change in the Eiffel system

1. Open a class, add an Information entry with an external resource in the class.
2. Start working on that class, save it at as you normally do on regular basis.
3. Open the information tool, go to Affected source item in the left tree.
4. Check the list of external resources that might be affected by last changes.
5. Acknowledge the changes once you have updated the external resource accordingly (possibly no change is required in the case of simple system changes).

Affected items in the Eiffel system caused by an external resource change

1. Open a class, add an Information entry with an external resource in the class.
2. Start working on that external resource, save it at as you normally do on regular basis.
3. Open the information tool, go to Affected target in the left tree.
4. Check the list of classes that might be affected by last changes of the external resource. (You may need to click on the "sweep the system now." button to get a full list if auto-sweeping is not enabled.)
5. Acknowledge the changes once you have updated the Eiffel system accordingly (possibly no change is required in the case of a simple edit in the external resource).

Current limitations

The tracking of external resource changes is limited to external resources that are local files. If an external resource is a URL, it will not detect any potential changes done at that URL.