please advise linux differnce program to compare old vs up graded files

[Wilson__]

please advise linux software for use to compare older version vs newer version of library software.   Just need basic compare.  Nothing special.

a) cli
b) with graphical user interface

AI says diff and mold.  Are they good?

[golden_labels]

Diff is the standard. With vimdiff offering a nice TUI, if you’re accustomed to vim.

[abeyer]

Other nice gui options are kdiff3 (oss) and Beyond Compare (paid commercial license.) In GUI-land I tend to alternate between those and meld based on the use case. They tend to have largely overlapping functionality, but I think each has its own strengths.

In the CLI space, some other options worth thinking about are: Using git-diff directly (you can use it as a standalone tool without a git repo with the --no-index option) specifically for its patience and histogram algorithms, which give far more readable diffs for many common types of code movement. diffoscope provides lots of support for recursively descending into various types of archive and container files, and can work alongside binwalk to compare disk and firmware images. difftastic is nice if you're using working with programming language files that have a treesitter grammar, as it will actually parse and understand the code at a structural level, and produce a more "syntactic" diff that reflects the structure of the language, rather than just a textual one.

[madires]

With GUI: Meld

[tunk]

You could also use the package manager of your distro
to see which versions they are, and then look at the
package source code. Or is this from some commercial
software?

[Wilson__]

Many thanks for advises.  I have two folders containing lib files.  One folder was downloaded time ago.  The other folder is latest. 

Tried a few and IMHO text base simple tools is easiest

[eutectique]

please advise linux software for use to compare older version vs newer version of library software.

What do you want to compare exactly? Two zip archives? Two .tgz archives? Two system logs? Two git repositories? Two shared library files -- binaries or disassembly?

Each use case would have a tool best suited for the task.

Just need basic compare.  Nothing special.

"Basic compare, nothing special" would be diff. But you might not be satisfied with the result.

[eutectique]

I have two folders containing lib files.

meld is good showing directories. Are you lib files text of binary? If the former, meld would show you the differences. If the latter, you will only see "binary files are different". They could have the same .text sections (I am speculating, you did not tell the details) but different time stamps. So, having the same code, they will technically be different.

[Wilson__]

Many thanks for advises.  I have an older and newer folders. For two versions of a source code lib.  All plain text source files.

[tggzzz]

Meld, for manual inspection of differences

[radiolistener]

git for version tracking, meld for text file comparison

when the folder is under git control, you can just type ```git status``` to get modified file list, or start meld with current folder as argument, it know how to obtain file status from git.

[Wilson__]

when the folder is under git control, you can just type ```git status``` to get modified file list, or start meld with current folder as argument, it know how to obtain file status from git.

Is that for git running on my local linux machine and not github?  I just trying to setup and not used git nor github (apart from downloading) before

[radiolistener]

Is that for git running on my local linux machine and not github?  I just trying to setup and not used git nor github (apart from downloading) before

git just allows you to track your local file changes, so you can see all commit history for the file, you can compare two different commits, you can revert back to any version, then restore latest version, etc. Then when you need you can push all your local commits to a server repository and obtain all server commits to your local git. But you can do tracking without pushing to the server, just locally.

If you want just to compare two text files, then simply type meld <file1> <file2>
Meld also support folder comparison, so you can pass two folders as argument.
It also allows to compare 3 files, just pass 3 files as command line argument.

[SiliconWizard]

I also use Meld as a GUI diff. Note that it's also available on Windows, if you use that: https://meldmerge.org/
On Windows, I used to use WinMerge otherwise: https://winmerge.org/

[JPortici]

On windows i use WinMerge

Love it!
Compare 2/3 files, or 2/3 folders, can recognize automatically if there is an archive (zip, rar, xlsx, ...) and operate on the archive data, or directly the binary
I use it for everything that is not already tracked into GIT, or for example two different text files.
Win2000 aesthetics so everything is direct and to the point.

I wonder if there is something simillar in linux

[DiTBho]

dev-util/difftastic is written in rust 

[abeyer]

On windows i use WinMerge
...
I wonder if there is something simillar in linux

Have you looked at Beyond Compare? Fairly similar ui and feature set, and cross platform implementation for win, mac, and linux. It's not free, but well worth the modest cost, imho.

[abeyer]

dev-util/difftastic is written in rust 

I'm not the "rewrite it in rust!" crowd, but given that this was a new build and the nature of what it does, seems like not a bad choice.

[DiTBho]

dev-util/difftastic is written in rust 

I'm not the "rewrite it in rust!" crowd, but given that this was a new build and the nature of what it does, seems like not a bad choice.

It's a problem for me because I can't compile it on { HPPA, MIPS, MIPS64, ARM-v5(1), .. } due to lack of Rust compiler.
(1) Zaurus GNU/Linux

[SiliconWizard]

Judging from what they say on their project page, you may not be missing much. It looks pumped-full of bugs.

[abeyer]

Judging from what they say on their project page, you may not be missing much. It looks pumped-full of bugs.

I've used it off and on for tasks it's a good match for, and has worked well in my experience. It's clearly not (nor intended to be) a full replacement for a general textual diff, though.

[abeyer]

It's a problem for me because I can't compile it on { HPPA, MIPS, MIPS64, ARM-v5(1), .. } due to lack of Rust compiler.

suppose it probably doesn't work on a UNIVAC either, huh? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Not to be too snarky, I'll just say I get the interest (and share it) in playing with less common/older/oddball architectures... but complaining that everyone who writes new software and gives it away for free doesn't support your particular collection of boat anchors doesn't really seem productive. (and if we're gonna complain,  sparc should be higher than any of those on the list  )

Also, mips, mipsel, and mips64 all have at least tier 3 support in rust now... not necessarily easy to work with, but they're there.

[DiTBho]

suppose it probably doesn't work on a UNIVAC either, huh? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Not to be too snarky, I'll just say I get the interest (and share it) in playing with less common/older/oddball architectures... but complaining that everyone who writes new software and gives it away for free doesn't support your particular collection of boat anchors doesn't really seem productive. (and if we're gonna complain,  sparc should be higher than any of those on the list  )

I certainly don't feel like complaining, but if I really have to, it's for posts like yours, which distort what I write.

I don't think your post was "sarcastic", but why do you have to put words in my mouth that I didn't write?
I just wrote that it's written in rust, it's a fact.
You asked me why this is relevant, and i said it's relevant to me, because I can't emerge it on the systems i support.

Also, mips, mipsel, and mips64 all have at least tier 3 support in rust now... not necessarily easy to work with, but they're there.

Talking about my experiments on Catalyst, Rust is rather experimental, not enough stable for an Overlay.

[DiTBho]

Judging from what they say on their project page, you may not be missing much. It looks pumped-full of bugs.

Yup. Same impression ... 

I will try it on my MacMini-2009/x86.
I'm curious because I also wrote a tool like this.
It only supports myC, I already talked about it in a similar topic to this one, just about tools for differences.
I reused part of the myC compiler code, the lexer, and the parser, for kind of "smarter" analysis between two source files.

[SiliconWizard]

Judging from what they say on their project page, you may not be missing much. It looks pumped-full of bugs.

Yup. Same impression ... 

I will try it on my MacMini-2009/x86.
I'm curious because I also wrote a tool like this.
It only supports myC, I already talked about it in a similar topic to this one, just about tools for differences.
I reused part of the myC compiler code, the lexer, and the parser, for kind of "smarter" analysis between two source files.

Yes, I remember that. This is an interesting approach, although not a replacement for a classic diff IMO, but complementary. Indeed, it would consider two pieces of code identical if they have the same AST (if I get it right), but you may have refactored code in a way that produces the exact same AST (but refactored maybe for readability reasons or otherwise) and the tool would miss that?