What is the difference between diff against basis and backing in Accurev

Question

What is the difference between diff against basis and diff against backing in Accurev?

Answer 1

I assume from your other posts in this forum that the context here would be in doing a diff of a file in your workspace against either Backed or Basis.

Diff against Basis is going to compare the file you currently have in your workspace with the version that you starting working with prior to making your changes. An example would be, you update your workspace, begin working on foo.c that is (backed) status, make several modifications to it and then run Diff against Basis. It will compare your modifications to the version you began with, regardless of what changes might now be in the parent stream. That is, it will show you only changes pertaining to your work.

Diff against Backed is going to compare the file you currently have in your workspace with the one that is currently in your backing - or parent -stream. Using the previous example, you have your modifications to foo.c but also another developer has promoted their own changes to foo.c into the parent stream since you began working. Running a Diff against Backed will compare your current file to the one in the parent stream, thus you will also be comparing against the other developer's changes, essentially viewing a pre-merge.

If no one else has made changes to foo.c, then Diff against Backed and Diff against Basis would yield the same result.

Lastly, for any given file, you can run History -> Browse Versions and diff any two versions that have ever existed if Backed or Basis isn't the specific compare you're looking for.

Hope this helps,
~James