How to keep track of changes to board as Mod is being created?

[JRCarr]

How do you talented Mod makers keep track of changes you make to the many board files while developing Mods, so that you can create a Mod once you have everything work correctly?

Jack

[haase]

First I back everything up...  that's key  

Then I just hack away completely regardless of any convention or methodology.

Then when I'm done I look at all the files that I modified (sort by modified in Windows Explorer) and compare those to the originals that were backed up.  I use windiff.exe, which is a completely free program from microsoft, although there are much better tools out there.  I'm told that "Beyond Compare" is better.

Anyway, windiff looks at the two files and shows you how they are different...  that way you can get a glimpse of just what the hell you were doing as you were hacking away blindly  

[JRCarr]

Humor is a necessity in programming, isn't it?    Thanks for the quick reply, I'll go see if I can find this windiff.exe or similar program.  I've just been adding a "comment" above each change so that I can do a "find" in a file and locate my changes.  Speaking of which, it sure would be nice if there were more documentation comments added to scripts.  
Thanks again.

Jack

[haase]

You may want to check HERE for the files (right-click, download) and some information on other differencing programs.

I have, unfortunately, met a few programmers with no sense of humor.  I refuse to work them (or rather, they refuse to work with me).

[JRCarr]

Thanks for the link, I've downloaded and will check it out when I get back to my project later.  Have great day and week.

Jack

[Joseph Fung]

Speaking of which, it sure would be nice if there were more documentation comments added to scripts.  

I don't know - people got a little uppity when I added comments to the orignal YaBB SE 1.x code