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Instruqt Lab Documentation

Change History

Overview

Section titled “Overview”

The Change History tab displays your lab’s complete version control history, showing all commits with their messages, authors, dates, and file changes.

Change history tab showing commit list

Viewing Commits

Section titled “Viewing Commits”

Reference Selection

Section titled “Reference Selection”

At the top of the Change History tab, select which reference to view using the Reference dropdown next to the “Commits” label.

Reference selector dropdown

The dropdown shows all available references in your repository. The currently selected reference is displayed (e.g., main), and commits are shown in reverse chronological order (newest first). The references include branches and tags.

Commit List

Section titled “Commit List”

Each commit entry in the list displays the commit message, author name, relative date (e.g., 35 minutes ago), and the short commit hash on the right (e.g., 4de63be).

Commit action buttons showing copy and view code icons

On the right side of each commit, you’ll find two action buttons: a copy icon (overlapping squares) to copy the full commit hash to your clipboard, and a code icon (</>) to view the detailed diff. You can also click anywhere on the commit row to view its details.

Viewing Commit Details

Section titled “Viewing Commit Details”

Click the code icon or anywhere on the commit row to view detailed information about that commit.

Detailed commit view showing file changes

The commit details view shows:

  • Commit header - Displays commit hash, author, date, and full commit message with a “Back to commits” link
  • Changed files sidebar - Left panel showing the file tree of all changed files
  • Diff view - Side-by-side comparison showing:
    • Lines removed (highlighted in red on the left side)
    • Lines added (highlighted in green on the right side)
    • Line numbers for both before and after states
    • File path and change summary (e.g., +1 -1 indicating additions and deletions)
Section titled “Navigating File Changes”
  • Click on any file in the Changed files sidebar to view its diff
  • Files are organized by their directory structure
  • The diff view shows a split comparison with the old version on the left and new version on the right
  • Changed lines are highlighted with color coding (red for removed, green for added)

Integration with Overview Tab

Section titled “Integration with Overview Tab”

The Overview tab displays recent commits in its Version Control sidebar. Clicking any commit there navigates directly to the Change History tab with that commit’s details displayed.

Next Steps

Section titled “Next Steps”