jardiff 0.3.0

Compare JAR libraries between two directories. Maven-aware, classifier-aware, resilient.

jardiff

jardiff is a command-line tool for comparing two directories of Java archive (JAR) files. It attempts to identify matching libraries by examining Maven metadata (pom.properties inside the JAR), manifest attributes, and heuristics based on the filename. Versions are parsed robustly, including common qualifiers such as SNAPSHOT or alpha, and classifier suffixes like sources or tests are accounted for when present.

The tool can output human-readable text summaries or structured JSON/XML reports. It optionally computes cryptographic hashes of the JAR files to detect content changes even when the version string remains the same.

Installation

The package is available on PyPI. The recommended way to install command-line utilities is with pipx:

pipx install jardiff

Alternatively, you can use pip directly:

pip install jardiff

Usage

To compare two directories of JAR files:

jardiff diff path/to/libA path/to/libB

Key options include:

Option	Description
-r, --recurse	Scan subdirectories recursively
--packages	Compare Java package sets to detect API differences
--hash	Compute file hashes (sha1, sha256, md5)
--format	Output format: text (default), json, or xml
--output	Write the output to the specified file instead of stdout

For example, to produce a JSON report of the differences:

jardiff diff --format json --output report.json /opt/app/lib_old /opt/app/lib_new

See the command-line help for more details:

jardiff diff --help