Global Edit

The Global Edit facility allows you to change the value of an identifier across all units explicitly referenced within a project. It can save significant time over a manual edit freeing the developer for other tasks.

Note: Only identifiers in units explicitly referenced from the project can be modified. A planned future development for DelphiXPG is the creation of a "Pseudo Super Project" which can contain not only Delphi projects and packages but also individual .Pas files and directory trees. This will allow editing across projects and source sets.

Performing a global edit

Before peforming a global edit on an identifier it is best to view all references to the item first using the XRef facility. This is to ensure there will not be a conflict with other identifiers in the contexts where it has been used.

Once you are sure the change will not have any unwanted side effects right click the selected identifer in the "Object Data" area select "Global Edit" from the pop up menu. The global edit dialog appears.

This dialog displays the current identifier and lists the units referencing it and how many times.

In the dialog set the value of "New Identifier" and click the "Edit" button. You should see the item has changed in the object tree and in the source.

Note: This does not cause the project to be reparsed.

View soure code changes

Once the source has been modified it is useful to see what has changed and that the changes are correct.

Units that have been changed have the "Show Changes" tool button and menu item enabled, they also show the change picture in the units list.

Select a unit that has been changed and click the "Show Changes" tool button.

The change form is displayed.

The form allows two types of operation, "Actions" which effect the visual and window linkage, and "Go To" that navigate through changes.

Actions

These effect the visual and window linkage within the change viewer.

Navigation

"Go To" operations allow you to navigate through the changes.

You can also navigate using the code overview column on the left-hand side. Moving the cursor over this shows the line number at the bottom. Clicking it will jump to that location.