Annotations

Annotations are a powerful way to inspect the contents of a text file to determine

• who contributed a particular section of code;
• when a change was made and why;
• which sections of a file were contributed at the same time (i.e. with the same revision); and
• who has been working on a file recently.

Cornerstone’s annotations are closely related to Subversion’s blame functionality, but provide a more informative and intuitive method of displaying attribution information.

Showing Annotations

Attributes are displayed along with files’ text in Cornerstone’s compare view. Annotations are not enabled by default but can be shown by

An additional annotation gutter is displayed next to each file in the compare view.

Annotation Bars

The annotation gutter is comprised of annotation bars. Each bar in the annotation gutter relates to a block of lines which were committed in the same revision. For example, in the above screenshot, lines 48–51 originated in the same revision.

Annotation Colors

The color of an annotation bar indicates which user contributed the lines. The users represented by the bar colors are listed in the legend window. The use of color to identify users makes it easy to obtain a visual overview of

• which areas of a file were contributed by which team members; and
• how many different users have contributed to the file’s contents.

Annotation Widths

The width of an annotation bar indicates how old the lines are. Older sections are represented by wider bars, whereas more recently committed sections are represented by thinner bars.

You can think of older sections of code as having less history (or being less mature) and therefore as having thinner bars.

Annotation Callout

Information about a section of lines can be displayed by moving the mouse over the lines’ annotation bar.

This will result in the section being highlighted and a callout being displayed beneath the section:

The callout displays the following information about the revision when the lines were committed:

• Revision Number
• User
• Date
• Age

Move the mouse out of an annotation bar to hide the callout.

Activating a Revision

You can activate a revision by clicking an annotation bar. The annotation callout is displayed and is expanded to show the log message for the selected revision:

Once activated, all sections from the revision are highlighted and the Previous Lines (⌘↑) and Next Lines (⌘↓) functions in the Compare menu can be used to navigate between the sections.

Deactivating a Revision

To deactivate a revision