Comparison Reports And Dashboard Review

Comparison Report Contract

vi-history-suite treats a VI comparison report as retained review evidence, not as transient shell output.

The installed comparison-report flow covers:

• revision-pair preflight for eligible VI revisions
• runtime selection
• retained packet and metadata persistence
• rendering of retained comparison evidence inside the extension

The embedded compare view now leads with a white Comparison context block that foregrounds selected/base commit hash, date, author, and subject facts. Runtime-diagnostic and process-observation detail remain retained for diagnosis, but they do not lead the embedded compare view.

Runtime Doctor

The comparison-report subsystem also retains a compact runtime summary so you do not need raw logs first.

That retained summary stays on packet/runtime evidence surfaces instead of replacing the commit-first compare header.

That runtime summary includes:

• selected provider
• selected engine
• platform
• blocked or failure reason when present
• one bounded next action

Checkbox-Selected Pair Review

At the history-panel level, comparison review is pair-selection first.

• use the checkbox column to select exactly two retained revisions
• review the explicit compare preflight section for the exact selected/base pair plus runtime facts
• choose Compare to generate or reopen retained comparison evidence for that exact pair
• the newer selected revision becomes selected and the older selected revision becomes base
• the oldest retained revision can still serve as the older/base side of a checkbox-selected pair
• there is no auto-run compare trigger on the second checkbox selection
• there is no separate compare button on commit rows for extension users
• retained comparison evidence opens from the checkbox-selected pair instead of falling back to VS Code text diff on binary VI content

Progress, Cancellation, And Trust

Comparison work is long-running enough that the extension treats it as an explicit progress surface.

Current behavior includes:

• bounded progress during comparison-report generation
• trust-aware refusal in untrusted workspaces
• retained partial evidence when cancellation happens after artifacts are built
• cancellation honored before a comparison-report panel opens

Export For Browser Viewing

An open comparison-report panel carries an Export Comparison Report (HTML) action in the editor title bar so you can open the evidence outside VS Code in Edge or Chrome and zoom into the graphics.

Export behavior includes:

• prompts for an accessible destination folder and writes a self-contained, timestamped bundle
• copies the LabVIEW-generated report together with its graphics dependency folder so block-diagram and front-panel images keep resolving in a browser
• prefers the graphics report and explains the exact reason before falling back to the diagnostic evidence packet when no graphics report is available
• offers to open the exported file in your default browser or reveal it in the OS file manager

Source Control Change Summary

When a VI has uncommitted changes, VI History marks it with a small badge in the Source Control and Explorer views so you can see at a glance that it changed.

Before you compare, hovering the badge prompts you to run Compare. After you compare the VI's working-tree change against its latest committed revision, the badge carries the semantic what changed narrative as a tooltip, so you can see what changed without reopening the full report.

• the narrative summary is shown after a working-tree comparison has produced it and only while the file still matches that comparison
• it reflects the change against the latest committed revision and clears once you revert or commit the change
• it is available only in trusted workspaces and never runs a comparison on its own