The Software Factory Customizations screen

It can be useful to know which files may not be following the architecture which your installed modules normally generates.

Towards this, the Software Factory is able to track customizations of code management instructions, i.e. where instructions such as IntentIgnore are added to files which aren't present in default template output:

Selecting the "Compare with Template" context menu option or simply double-clicking a customization will open a diff comparing the unmerged template output (left) with the current file (right):

It is worth noting that editing and saving the file in the right pane will trigger re-running the code merging for that particular file allowing fixing of customizations without having to open the file through some other means.

Customizations can be approved by right-clicking it and selecting "Approve customization" which will also record who approved the customization and when. To see when a customization was approved, you can hover over the name in the "Approved by" column and read the tooltip which shows.

If the particular customization(s) for the file changes, the approval is revoked, approvals can also be manually revoked using the context menu.

The final option available on the context menu is the ability to update "Notes" on a customization, allowing you to enter any free form text which you feel may be relevant to a particular customization.

Tip

The Software Factory CLI's ensure-no-outstanding-changes command has a --check-for-unapproved-customizations option that can be used on CI environments to automatically detect unapproved customizations pushed into source control.