Analysis
Historical comparison: what changed between two points in time
Pick two sources, a working copy, a branch, a tag or a commit, and both states land on one dual table with the same chart, the same mapping and the same scale, so a height difference is a real difference.
- A comparison card reports added, removed and modified counts plus per-metric deltas.
- It never runs checkout or fetch, and never writes inside .git: your branch and files stay where you left them.
- It talks to your local git, so it works the same on GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket or a self-hosted server.
How to read it
Pick two sources: your working copy, a branch, a tag or a commit. Both states land on one dual table, side by side, each labelled with its revision and date.
The whole design rests on one decision: both sides get the same chart, the same mapping and the same scale. That is what makes the comparison honest. If one side is taller, it is taller because the metric is larger, not because the two halves were scaled independently. A comparison card alongside reports how many files were added, removed and modified, plus the delta per metric.
The chart is yours to choose, the same eight the classic analysis offers, and whatever you pick is applied to both sides at once. Reading it is safe by construction: it never runs checkout or fetch and never writes inside .git, so your branch, your index and your files stay exactly where you left them.
What makes the comparison honest
- Same chart: both revisions render with the same geometry
- Same mapping: the same metric drives the same channel on each side
- Same scale: so a height difference is a real difference, not an artefact
Read-only by design: it talks to your local git, so it behaves the same whether the remote is GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket or self-hosted, and it never writes to any of them.
What you can compare against
Any two of these can go on the left and the right, and the comparison is recomputed live as you save.
- Working copy
- Your current files, including edits you have not committed.
- Branch
- The tip of any branch your local repository knows about.
- Tag
- Any tag, the usual way to pin a released version.
- Commit
- An exact commit, picked from the panel’s filtered list.
What the numbers mean
These are the extension’s own definitions: the same glossary the in-room guide shows, generated from the real analysis contracts.
- Reference
- The branch, tag or commit you are comparing against.
- Working copy
- Your current files, including unsaved edits.
- Delta
- The new value minus the old one, for each metric.
- Compared metrics
- Lines, functions and complexity: the same set the classic analysis uses.
The dual table
Two revisions side by side, on one shared scale.
The controller
The two source slots, the filters, and mapping applied to both sides at once.
Inside VS Code
The same comparison as a searchable table of per-item deltas.
The in-room guide
The walkthrough and the metric glossary for the comparison.
The other three analyses
The same pedestal serves all four, and the controller switches between them without losing the state of any.
That is one of the four analyses. They all come from the same extension, and the same install.
Install it and run it