Quickly see differences between Zone Versions with Version Comparisons

Version Comparisons for Zone Versioning

Starting the week of July 10, 2023, Zone Versioning gains a new feature: Version Comparisons. This lets you see, side by side, exactly what changed between two versions of your zone configuration. The goal is to make it easier to confirm that a new version is correct before promoting it to production.

Zone Versioning, available to all Cloudflare Enterprise customers since early 2023, lets you create and manage independent versions of your zone configuration. This workflow is built around testing changes in staging or test environments before rolling them out to production traffic, which can help catch configuration issues before they impact a live zone.

Why Version Comparisons?

Diff tools are a standard part of software development, letting developers validate their own changes and letting reviewers focus on exactly what was modified. However, diff utilities are file-based and don't naturally apply to GUI-managed configurations. Before Version Comparisons, understanding the difference between two zone versions meant manually inspecting both versions across the various dashboard sections, which was tedious and prone to mistakes.

Version Comparisons apply the same concept as a diff, but within the Cloudflare Dashboard, so no command line is required. The feature highlights which configuration items changed between two versions, giving you confidence that deploying a new version won't result in surprises.

Using Version Comparisons

To get started, navigate to a zone that has Zone Versioning enabled and select 'Version Management' from the left-hand navigation. Getting started with Zone Versioning is covered in the dev docs.

Within the Version Management tab, you'll find a third option: 'Comparisons'. Select it, then choose the two versions you want to compare and click 'Compare'.

After a few seconds, the page updates with a per-product comparison. The lower numbered version always appears on the left, and the top displays which environments each version is assigned to, so you can confirm you're comparing the right ones. A common workflow is comparing the versions assigned to staging and production before promoting staging to production.

Products with changes are flagged with 'changes detected'. Selecting one opens the diff for that product across the two versions.

Additions and removals for that service are highlighted. From there, you can decide whether further changes are needed or whether the new version is ready to be deployed.

Availability

Version Comparisons is available to all customers using Zone Versioning. Cloudflare Enterprise customers can check the dev docs to get started with both Zone Versioning and Version Comparisons.