This would obviously be a fairly major change. Here’s my idea:
FB monitors a specified “build directory”. It compares the contents of that directory before and after every action. Then, after a build, you can view a list of all the files in a directory and see the history of each file: it was extracted from the library at step 13 in action list “Extract”, had a text-replace performed on it in step 2 of action list “Updateconfig” and was deleted in action list “cleanup”.
This would be tremendously useful to me, as I’m constantly asked questions like “where did file X come from?” There’s currently no systematic way to answer that question - depending on the type of file, I might have to look in a number of different places. Whereas a single list, especially if it could be dumped to a text file, would make that dead simple.
Please? 
(Alternatively, if there was a mechanism like the OnFailure action list to specify actions that take place before and after every action, one could construct the whole thing above in FB, by using BeyondCompare. Though you would need some metavariables like the name of the action that is about to be executed, the name of the actionlist that it was in, etc…)
Steve
thanks for the idea Steve
You could actually achieve this using the BeforeAction and AfterAction script events (which every action has). ie. you could write some script that takes a snapshot of the system in the BeforeAction and then compares it to the changes made to your files in the AfterAction. It can be done as a global script, so that you could easily call it (ie. one liner) from the script events. Now, I’m saying that it can be done, but I didn’t say it would be easy 
.t8
Yeah, I sort of figured there would be a way of doing it like that, but since you have to add the step manually to each action, it’s sort of self-negating. Like:
Formula for doing everything right:
1. Remember what you have to do next
2. Do it.
3. Check that you did it right.
4. Go to step 1.
Steve
yeah… not the most elegant way