# Finding out who to blame with the Annotate command

Let's say you have found a bug on line 65 of a file and you don't understand the code. Who do you ask, or blame, for the change? Well you could start by looking at the resource history for the file, but that won't tell you who changed that particular line. This is why the Annotate command is useful. You can pick any ASCII file (see note on binary files) and get a listing of who changed what line.

The Show Annotation action is available form the following places: History View, Repository Explorer, Synchronize View, and the Resource and Packages View. When the annotate is run you will be able to:

- Step through changes in the Annotate View and the text editor will highlight the associated lines associated with the selected change.

- You can select a line in the text file and the Annotate View will select the change that is associated with that line.

- The History View will show the history for the opened file and highlight the revision of the currently selected change. This allow you to quickly see the commit comment for a particular change.

## Only works with text files

The annotate command will only work with files that are marked as ASCII in the CVS repository. Also, the command will open a text file to show the changes even if the associated editor in the workbench is a non-text editor. For example, if you run annotate on a plugin.xml file a simple text editor will be opened instead of the full PDE editor.

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