• Report export

DiffPlug can export a report using either the GUI or the command line. You can choose a human-readable format (PDF / DOCX) or a machine-readable format (XML). Each of these options are described below.

Exporting from the GUI

Click the Diff Report Report button.

Export report button

This opens the Diff Report dialog.

  • View will show the selected report format.
  • Export will open a Save as dialog, allowing you to export the report to a specific location.
  • Close closes the dialog.

Export report dialog

Exporting from the command line

Note: DiffPlug’s command line utility, dp.exe, must be on your system path. DiffPlug installs itself to either “C:\Program Files\DiffPlug” or “C:\Program Files (x86)\DiffPlug”.

The syntax for exporting at the commandline is

dp {left} {right} {reportDestination} [optional Simulink config] --Extra,SimulinkDiffExport[format]

where format is equal to one of:

IMG_PER_DIFF_PDF
IMG_PER_DIFF_DOCX
IMG_PER_DIAGRAM_PDF
IMG_PER_DIAGRAM_DOCX
XML
XML_WITH_IMAGES

DiffPlug has the unusual requirement that the reportDestination file must already exist. DiffPlug will automatically overwrite its contents, so it doesn’t matter what is inside, but DiffPlug will not continue unless the file already exists.

Below is an example batch script which ensures that the reportDestination file exists before calling dp.exe.

:: make sure the report file exists
copy NUL report.pdf

:: diff these two files, and export a PDF report
dp v1/simulink/OvenController.slx v2/simulink/OvenController.slx report.pdf --Extra,SimulinkDiffExportIMG_PER_DIFF_PDF

Human-readable report (PDF and DOCX)

The human readable report contains the following sections:

  • Setup contains all information necessary to recreate the diff.
    • Files describes the root model elements which are being compared.
    • Config describes the filtering setup used for the comparison.
    • Statistics enumerates the number of additions and changes on each side.
  • Changes and Additions is a list of all the changes and additions in the model.

report first page

For each changed element, the report contains:

  • The path to the changed element
  • An image of the changed element’s parent diagram
  • A tree view of the properties of the element which changed

In the image per difference format, every single difference gets its own image where the current difference is highlighted. Note: We highly recommend using the table of contents to navigate image per difference reports. This makes the report appear animated, because the diagram will remain stationary as the highlighted element moves from page to page.

report first page

In the image per diagram format, many differences share a single image. This allows for smaller filesize and faster generation, but it can be more difficult to navigate.

report first page

Machine-readable report (XML)

DiffPlug can also export an easy-to-parse XML file which contains the same content as the human-readable report. The structure of the XML file matches the structure of the human-readable export exactly.

For the XML_WITH_IMAGES mode, every change will have a 1:1 scale png image highlighting the change. If the report’s filename is report.xml, these images will be in report.xml_imgs, and all of the image filenames are referenced in the file.