Lotus Notes Diff Tool

Question

Is there any diff tool for Lotus Notes which allows to compare scripts, design elements and documents?

Uppsala

superuser.com – Riboflavin

I'd say this question is appropriate for StackOverflow. It might have a broad audience, but there's no doubt a diff tool would be useful to developers. – Asyut

Answer 1

If all else fails (and by "all else" I mean the often ridiculous corporate procurement system) you can always do a an export to DXL (or a Design Synopsis for code alone) and use any decent text editor with a diff function. It's not TeamStudio Delta, but it will get you where you want to go.

Tergal

I spent almost 10 years doing this, because of "all else failing" per your definition! It's a pain, not to mention horrendously time-consuming depending on what you're trying to do, but it does work. – Sward

Answer 2

I see this is an old question, and most of the other answers are a little outdated now, so I thought I would add some hopefully valuable information for those who should stumble upon this now.

In Domino Designer, open either the Navigator or Package Explorer (Window menu -> Show Eclipse Views). Here you can expand databases/templates to see the design elements they contain. Select two or three elements (CTRL-click). They can be in different databases or the same database. Right click on one of the elements and select Compare with -> Each other.

You can also compare two databases element by element by selecting two databases/templates, right-clicking and selecting Compare with -> Each other. You will then get the differences between the two databases listed. You will be able to see which elements differ between the two databases, and which elements exist in one database but not the other. By double-clicking on a differing element, you will open a diff tool which lets you see differences line by line, and you can easily copy changes from left to right or right to left.

Devotee

See, now that's exactly what I needed. +1 for you! – Wingless

Answer 3

There is a tool from TeamStudio called Delta: http://www.teamstudio.com/products/delta.html

Asyut

I'll vouch for this tool -- I just wish I'd had a copy in every shop I worked in. – Tergal

Answer 4

There is a free tool from OpenNTF which does document comparisons: http://www.openntf.org/Projects/pmt.nsf/ProjectLookup/Compare%20Notes%20Documents

Ytria also has a product which, among other things, will compare data documents (I don't believe it compares design elements).

http://www.ytria.com/website.nsf/WebPageRequest/Solutions_scanEZ_specen

And, I believe Martin Scott (http://www.martinscott.com) has a similar product which compares documents.

Runck

Answer 5

DDE (Domino Designer on Eclipse) let's you compare design elements natively. Same way as the search. It's pretty efficient (faster than a DXL exportation) and it's free.

Teressaterete

Answer 6

I had a discussion on my blog a little while back about this:

http://rosshawkins.net/archive/2009/12/24/notesdomino-refactoringanalysis-tools.aspx

However what I've ended up doing in the past is exporting the design to the filesystem and using standard text tools (WinMerge and SublimeText for me personally) to do what I need.

Being able to do the raw dump is something that was added with the Eclipse based designer, and isn't overly obvious, but you can read more about it here:

rosshawkins.net/archive/2010/01/20/searching-the-contents-of-notesdomino-design-elements.aspx

(link mangled as my rep is too low to post 2 links in one post yet!)

Sheepcote

Answer 7

Teamstudio Delta is really nice. However it might kill you with too many details. As Ross pointed out the Domino Designer 8.5 can use the Diff tool inherited from Eclipse. You also could head over to http://www.openntf.org and look for the DXLMagic project. It can generate a report that shows differences (including code) between 2 databases (typically a template and a variation of it). It is not as complete as Delta, but shows the essentials. It's free and source is included (Disclaimer: I wrote it).

Dogma

Answer 8

This is what I do. I run a design synopsis of the database using the Notes Designer. Dump the file to a text file. You can actually split the synopsis out to different objects like Agents, Forms, Views, etc. Then you can run UNIX/Linux/Mac Unix commands to compare the elements. By doing this operation you find out what code is active, and have a complete documented source code. You do a lot of csplit and a few sed commands.

Strapper

Answer 9

Version 12.0.1 has such a tool as part of the server. Look for comparedbs.ntf and designsynopsis.ntf on the Domino server.

Cochin