What types of comparisons can I do?

Profiles consist of both a textual definition and a set of binary packages. It is not possible to exactly describe a profile without having both of these pieces of data, yet each piece of data is useful for different purposes and at different times.

When deciding which to use, consider the following guidelines.

Compare profile definition

Compare the XML definition of each profile. The profile definition is always available for every profile and version. It is most useful when:

You are comparing one version of a profile against another version of the same profile. In cross-profile comparisons, the XML definition will often be very different, even if the profile contents are fairly similar.
You need to compare some aspect of a system that is not operating-system package related. For example, disk partitioning information, or the name of a virtual system image file.

Compare installed packages

Compare the list of packages installed on an actual TeamForge Lab Management system that was installed at that profile and version. While very accurate, this data is not available for versions of profiles that have never been built inside your TeamForge Lab Management environment. This data is most useful when:

You are comparing the contents of different versions of a profile that is assembled from a binary image (e.g., Windows profiles from VMWare images).
You are comparing different profiles of the same base operating system. For example, let us assume you have two Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 profiles. You know they should share some packages in common, but you're not sure which ones and where.
You want a complete package manifest of the system. Compare a profile and version against itself, and select the "Comparison" style of diff output to generate a manifest of all the operating-system packages on the system.