10.37. Diffutils-3.2

The Diffutils package contains programs that show the differences between files or directories.

10.37.1. Installation of Diffutils

Prepare Diffutils for compilation:

./configure --prefix=/usr

Diffutils wants ed as the default editor. The following sed will change the default to vim:

sed -i 's@\(^#define DEFAULT_EDITOR_PROGRAM \).*@\1"vi"@' lib/config.h

Compile the package:

make

To test the results, issue: make check.

Install the package:

make install

10.37.2. Contents of Diffutils

Installed programs: cmp, diff, diff3, and sdiff

Short Descriptions

cmp

Compares two files and reports whether or in which bytes they differ

diff

Compares two files or directories and reports which lines in the files differ

diff3

Compares three files line by line

sdiff

Merges two files and interactively outputs the results