When it comes to an application’s configuration, effective change management is critical. In agile development changes frequently occur, making it necessary to understand and track them transparently. This is where diffs come into play. Comparing the difference between two states of an application, a diff allows developers to reason about previous and upcoming changes. Diffing is also crucial for debugging, as it immediately highlights any changes made and enables developers to identify which elements need further investigation to troubleshoot issues.
Diffs are a developer's faithful companion throughout the software development lifecycle. They are commonly used to compare changes in various work environments, including the terminal, IDE, version control system—and Humanitec. With Humanitec, developers can review changes through a diff before deploying them, which ensures that any modifications are fully understood before being pushed. Additionally, Humanitec enables developers to create a diff of two previous deployments, allowing for changes to be tracked from any point in time.
We’re thrilled to announce a new and improved way of diffing deployments in Humanitec. Based on feedback from our users, we’ve upgraded the design, layout, and informational value of deployment diffs. The new diff provides a categorised overview of all updates and displays changes as a delta in either JSON or YAML format. With these improvements, you'll be able to reason about your changes in greater detail and with a higher degree of familiarity, as the new diffing experience closely mirrors that of working with the Humanitec API.
Diff Like a Pro: Humanitec's Enhanced Deployment Diff Is Here
Curious to see what's new? We're excited to take you through the improvements we've made to Humanitec's diffing features, giving you a sneak peek of what to expect when you next log in to Humanitec.
Deployment Diffs
Before deploying a draft deployment or redeploying a past deployment in Humanitec’s UI, you’re presented with a diff highlighting each update. With the new design, changes are conveniently categorised as updated, added, and removed for each workload. Additionally, an extra section for shared resources has been added, enabling developers to track changes here.
Changes are displayed as a delta between the source and target deployment. The path is shown for each property with the changed value highlighted below. You can choose to display the changes in YAML or JSON formats as per your preference.
Once you have reviewed the changes, it's time to hit deploy and see the magic happen!
Diff Deployments
With Humanitec, you can also generate a diff between any two deployments in a specific environment. Simply select the "Diff deployment" option on the desired deployment and you'll be directed to a new page where you can compare your chosen deployment (the source) to any other deployment in the same environment (the target). The resulting diff will highlight differences between the two deployments, giving you a clear overview of what has changed.
By clicking the "Change" button you can select a new deployment to compare. If you need to switch to a different environment, you can easily do so via the breadcrumb menu at the top of the page.
How to get started
To start, log in to your Humanitec account or start a free trial today. You’ll find helpful guides and reference documentation in our knowledge base if you're new to the platform.
Feel free to explore and experiment with the new feature to understand how it works. And if you have any questions or need assistance, our team is always here to help ensure your experience with the feature is a success.
