Re: Extracting a "score diff" from two [or more] Lilypond sources

[Carl Sorensen]

Just thinking out loud -- could a diff in the midi events be helpful?  The midi 
events represent sounds, which is the most important output the musicians need 
to know about, and they are virtually unaffected by tweaks, etc.

Ccarl

________________________________________
From: lilypond-user <lilypond-user-bounces+carl.d.sorensen=gmail.com@gnu.org> 
on behalf of Kieren MacMillan <kieren@kierenmacmillan.info>
Sent: Saturday, January 22, 2022 3:34 PM
To: David Kastrup
Cc: Lilypond-User Mailing List
Subject: Re: Extracting a "score diff" from two [or more] Lilypond sources

Hi David,

> What version control system are you using for your score?  It will
> probably easiest to look at the source code diffs and do a manual
> summary from those.

The problem is that during various stages of composition / arranging / 
engraving / coding:
   1. there can be huge differences in code that represent only a few small 
differences in notated output;
   2. there can be very small differences in code that represent many/large 
differences in notated output; and
   3. there can be many, many small changes in code (cleanup, variable-izing, 
moving tweaks to/from the edition-engraver, file splitting, etc.) that 
literally have *no* effect on the notated output.

Especially in the third case, combing through all those changes to manually 
summarize changes worth noting to others would be time-consuming and 
error-prone. If my process were more luxurious, I'd do a "'notable changes' 
only" pass, manually summarize the diff(s), and then do the other code work in 
a separate pass — the issue is that the timeline of a workshop doesn't grant me 
that luxury, so I was hoping there was an automagic way of figuring out exactly 
and only those things that needed to be communicated to the MD/performers in 
any given score update.

Thanks,
Kieren.