diffoscope 42

in-depth comparison of files, archives, and directories

diffoscope will try to get to the bottom of what makes files or directories different. It will recursively unpack archives of many kinds and transform various binary formats into more human readable form to compare them. It can compare two tarballs, ISO images, or PDF just as easily.

It can be scripted through error codes, and a report can be produced with the detected differences. The report can be text or HTML. When no type of report has been selected, diffoscope defaults to write a text report on the standard output.

diffoscope is developed as part of the “reproducible builds” Debian project. It is meant to be able to quickly understand why two builds of the same package produce different outputs. diffoscope was previously named debbindiff.

Example

To compare two files in-depth and produce an HTML report, run something like:

$ bin/diffoscope --html output.html build1.changes build2.changes

diffoscope will exit with 0 if there’s no differences and 1 if there are.

diffoscope can also compare non-existent files:

$ bin/diffoscope /nonexistent archive.zip

To get all possible options, run:

$ bin/diffoscope --help

External dependencies

diffoscope requires Python 3 and the following modules available on PyPI: libarchive-c, python-magic.

Optionally, the following modules will enhance it:

• tlsh is used to recognize file renames. It is build from tlsh source. Available on Debian as python3-tlsh.

• python-debian is used to inspect Debian control files. It is available on PyPI.

• rpm-python is used to inspect RPM files. It is built from rpm. Available on Debian and Fedora as python3-rpm.

• Magic-file-extension can be used instead of python-magic. It is built from file. Available on Debian and Fedora as python3-magic.

The various comparators rely on external commands being available. To get a list of them, please run:

$ bin/diffoscope --list-tools

Contributors

Lunar, Reiner Herrmann, Chris Lamb, Helmut Grohne, Holger Levsen, Mattia Rizzolo, Daniel Kahn Gillmor, Paul Gevers, Peter De Wachter, Yasushi SHOJI.

License

diffoscope is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

diffoscope is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with diffoscope. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.