# Comparing crosscutting

If you change the pointcut associated with some advice, you may change the locations the advice affects. Similiarly if you add a new method, it may become advised by existing advice, or if you rename a method or change its signature, advice that was previously affecting it may no longer match. You may wish to use the Crosscutting Comparison view to compare the crosscutting relationships in an AspectJ project before and after such a change.

The list of crosscutting relationships in an AspectJ project can be saved out into a file. The relationships in this file can then be compared with a later version of the project, or with a crosscutting file that was created at a different time. This crosscutting information includes details of those locations in a project that are being affected by advice or inter-type declarations.

The crosscutting relationships of two individual elements in a project can also be compared. This allows any differences in the places affected by two different advice elements to be easily determined. Declare error and warning elements can also be compared against other declare elements, or against advice elements.

Saving crosscutting information
Comparing two builds
Comparing with the current build
Comparing two elements