On the dailylog blog from lenart.org.pl, there's a quick post talking about a feature of an up and coming PHP IDE - PHP Storm - that's based on the JetBrains platform. He talks about a handy feature that let's you find the difference between your code and what's out in production.

Previously I used ordinary text editor to write the application, but nowadays I thought there should be something better – we have the craft, so with the craft you must have THE tools. The first place I checked was The JetBrains site and they didn’t disappointed me - what I found was The JetBrains PHP Storm!

The feature he highlights is the "Compare with deployed version" that lets you, right in the IDE, find the differences between your current code and what's in the repository. No need to flip back and forth between a terminal window and the code. Plus you get a nice visual diff representation to make things even simpler.