How to use "compare" in BC Comparator Guide

The compare tool (compare.exe) performs a comparison between two Symbian OS builds and should be run after depmodel. The compare tool checks for any binary compatibility breaks involving the following:

Differences in ordinal export points in libraries that define the binary interface of the build.
Differences in sizes of classes with exported constructors.

The result is output to a report.txt file in the same directory from where the tool is run.

NOTE: This tool will *not* resolve any mismatches! It will only list where they are. You then need to investigate and resolve any binary compatibility breaks yourself.

To use the tool, simply define the source location of each build and then run compare from the command line, using the following options and arguments:

> compare [-g] [-v] [-to61] [-from61] [-nosourcepass] <loc1> <loc2> <desc1> <desc2>

In order for the tool to work, you must define the two builds that you are comparing by entering both directory locations and descriptions as follows:

`<loc1>`	Directory location of the first Symbian OS source base.
`<loc2>`	Directory location of the second Symbian OS source base.
`<desc1>`	Description of the first location, text based.
`<desc2>`	Description of the second location, text based.

The following arguments are optional but might be useful.

`-g`	Generates extra headers in "`extra_headers.txt`"
`-v`	Verbose mode.
`-h`	Print this help.
`-from61`	The `<loc1>` source line does not have components in subsystem directories.
`-to61`	The `<loc2>` source line does not have components in subsystem directories.
`-nosourcepass`	Source components that cannot be found will not be processed during the comparison.

A full example of how to use the compare tool is shown below:

> compare -v g:\main\generic e:\main\generic "Build1" "Build2"

How to use `compare`

Command line syntax

Directory locations

Optional arguments

Example

See also