Spotlight on Spira 6.7.1 - CI Build and Source Code Diff Enhancements

January 13th, 2021 by inflectra

We are excited about the next release of Spira 6.7.1, due to be released in early February. This new version includes some usability enhancements for viewing the differences between changes in large source code files as well as a major overhaul of the continuous integration (CI) build details page. These enhancements streamline the viewing of CI builds and verifying the code changes included in each CI build.

Build Details Overhaul

SpiraTeam and SpiraPlan integrate with a variety of different continuous integration build servers such as Jenkins, TeamCity, ADO Pipelines and Bamboo / Bitbucket pipelines. When pipelines and builds are executed, they report back automatically into Spira with the list of associated source code commits and any affected Spira artifacts (requirements, user stories, tasks, incidents, defects, etc.).

In the latest version of Spira (v6.7.1) we have completed a major overhaul of the page to improve usability and bring the most important information to your fingertips.

The new page will display the name, status and date of the build, together with the source code commits and artifact associations right at the top of the page:

By not using tabs, you can now see both the associations and commits at the same time in parallel. We have also added automated hyperlinks from the artifact tokens (e.g. [RQ:45]) in the commit messages directly to the relevant artifact. This is consistent with the improvements we made to the main source code pages in v6.7 last year.

Underneath the commits and associations we have sections now visible for the linked incidents and the build console output:

Previously the console output was at the top, but now it has been moved further down based on customer feedback and our observations of user behavior.

Source Code Difference Viewing for Large Files

One of the major enhancements in v6.7 last year was the introduction of inline source code difference viewing. This new feature lets you view the code changes made in commits directly inside Spira, providing both a unified and side-by-side view.

However one issue we have found is that for large files, a lot of scrolling could be necessary to move between the different sections of interest:

So, in v6.7.1 we have added the option to collapse the unchanged sections between the parts of the file that have changed, making it easier to quickly review the changes in large files:

The same issue occurs in the unified view as well:

So we have added the same collapse option in this view as well:

We hope you like these changes as much as we do!

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