XDepend allows you to compare two different builds of the same application. Doing an analysis with build comparison allows you to visualize what has changed, has been removed or added between the two builds. It also lets you use special CQL keywords to write custom queries related to the evolution of your code.
Compare builds using the XDepend GUI
You can easily perform a build comparison using the XDepend GUI. The feature is located in the Compare menu where Choose Jars or Analysis to Compare will open a new window for you. You can then either select jars to compare or a previous build if you already analyzed the old build.
You can also configure Analysis comparison in the Project Properties pane, in the Analysis tab. The settings you configure here will be written to the XDepend project XML file.
Compare builds when running an analysis with XDepend Console
It can be interesting to compare builds when running an analysis with XDepend Console. This allows you to automatically generate custom reports on new releases for example. Instructions on generating custom reports can be found here and examples of custom reports of build comparisons are accessible here.
To compare builds with XDepend Console, you can either use a XDepend project XML file configured with the GUI, tweak the BuildComparisonSetting tag and its attributes of the XML file manually, or use the command line argument /AnalysisResultToCompareWith followed by the absolute path to the VisualXDepend.bin of the previous analysis. (full documentation of the XDepend Console command line arguments can be found here).