Dirdiff is a graphical tool for displaying the differences between directory
trees (up to 5) and for merging changes from one tree into another.
At startup,
dirdiff displays a main window with a list of the files that are different
between the trees. Colored squares are used to indicate the relative
ages of the versions. Files are like leaves on a deciduous tree: the
newest ones are green, and then they turn yellow, orange, and red as
they get older. Missing files are black, and directories are white.
To see the differences between two versions of a file, double-click on
the file name. By default, the first and last versions are compared,
but this can be changed using the
Diff menu in the main window.
In the differences window, there are checkboxes to the left of all the
sections which are different. You can use button 1 to select an
individual checkbox, or shift-button 1 or button 3 to select a whole
group. Selecting a line means that you are asking for that change to
be made when you update either of the files using the Merge menu. The
line will be removed if it is already present or added if it is not
present.
To copy from one tree to another, click on the file name and
select the appropriate copy operation from the
Copy menu of the main window.
Selecting
Make patch from the
File menu of the main window produces a file describing the changes between
the files that can be applied by the patch tool. You can edit the
patch before saving, and may wish to add explanatory text,
instructions, or patch
Prereq lines at the beginning. To save the patch, enter a filename in the
patch window relative to the current directory, and choose
Save. This will also close the window.
If you are sending out patches, then the
from directory should be the original version of the source. Try to make
sure that the two files have the same number of leading directories.
See the patch(1) man page for more information.
NOTES
Dirdiff needs to be able to load the
libfilecmp.so.0.0 shared library for the -r or -t flags to work.
