Keeping track of Customization - Best pra

Hi Hamish,

First, as a general rule, I encourage clients to keep modifications to a minimum. I have plenty of "war stories" to share with them about clients who wanted so many changes to their base code that it became impractical to re-apply all those mods against future releases, thus they find it difficult to take advantage of upgrades the software vendor offers.

Then, once we do commit to changes, I comment the script at the top of the page with a "change log" that summarizes edits followed by individual comments in the code.  If I add a block of code, I do something that indicates "gbdg - new block added below" and "gbdg - new block added above".  Or if I add a database column to the selected fields on a SQL query, I add a comment ' gbdg- added XXX to query below.

This way when a new release is to be applied, I search for my (company initials) "gbdg" to find any pages that have been edited.  And pray that the client has followed suit...

I have also been known to retain a .xls worksheet listing all the changes and I and the client may have made.

And I personally like www.compareandmerge.com for comparing old/new scripts.

 

You guys have pretty much covered it. We comment each change within a module with a "NetProfits - brief description of the change" comment or put start and end comments around larger blocks of code changes. We also keep a document per client that lists all modules that were changed with a description of the changes. We use Beyond Compare to update changes to new modules. 

Great post
This is a very serious issue.
I have given up trying to comment changes. If the changes were restricted to one area of the code then this is straightforward but this is not always the case. The value of header commenting is also restricted when the change affects a group of files. This is not exactly unique to PC set of files.

In more strictly controlled project I would be more formal about source control. (However, - I do keep backups). But for a constantly evolving website, speed and flexibility is more important to me than being able to retrace steps. Most of the time - I can never fully figure out how a change was implemented from the comments.

I figure that the site will evolved through small changes. But every 1-3 years it will either be completely refreshed and rebuilt from scratch or just left as is.My point is that speed has to be weighed against perfection.

Small update that some people might find handy:
To compare documents I use ExamDiff.   It's freeware (windows) and they have a pro version if you need more out of it (of cos not free)..
The freeware version does a great job for me..
I have my original files in 1 folder and the modified ones in another folder.. Compare and it's super easy to see what has been changed / added / deleted / etc....
here's the link to it for those interested:
http://www.prestosoft.com/edp_examdiff.asp

For my personal tracking I have a small MS-Access database online with ASP where I add the original file line number + the original code, the new file line + the new (changed / added / etc..) code and personal comments.
Added a search with it and now know exactly what changed, where and why....

For those interested:

Screenshot of my list of code changes



Screenshot when adding a change to the list:




Edited by worldofrugs - 19-May-2008 at 2:38pm