dummy question: diff

[will_asher]

How do you make a diff?

(I understand that that is a record of all the differences between two files or groups of files, correct me if I'm wrong)

I googled it and found this:

http://stephenjungels.com/jungels.net/articles/diff-patch-ten-minutes.html

I tried to take it's advice and I got
"'diff' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file."

[zaimoni]

How do you make a diff?

(I understand that that is a record of all the differences between two files or groups of files, correct me if I'm wrong)

I googled it and found this:

http://stephenjungels.com/jungels.net/articles/diff-patch-ten-minutes.html

I tried to take it's advice and I got
"'diff' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file."

diff is a *NIX utility. If you're on Windows, you need to install the relevant chunk of either MingW32 or CygWin (I use MingW32).

Any decent source code control system will also provide diff functionality (SVN/Git/Mercurial/..., unsure about CVS).

[krugar]

If you want to go directly to the programs, you can download the GNU Diffutils package.

Personally I also like colordiff. This is a perl script that wraps around diff and outputs in color. Quite useful if you appreciate syntax coloring. To facilitate usage, you can add the following to your shell settings file (usually ~/.bashrc if you are using bash)

alias diff='colordiff'

[will_asher]

okay I downloaded diiffutils and extracted it from the archive. now what?

what directory do these files have to be in for diff to work?
I don't see any file called diff...?

[Magnate]

okay I downloaded diiffutils and extracted it from the archive. now what?

what directory do these files have to be in for diff to work?
I don't see any file called diff...?

Will, Krugar is using Linux and you, IIUC, are using Windows. As Zaimoni said, you'll need either mingw32 or cygwin.

The usual syntax is

diff -u file1 file2 >outputfile.diff

or

diff -u dir1 dir2 >outputfile.diff

(the -u tells it to use the "unified diff" format)

But if you're using svn or git you can just type "svn diff" or "git diff" to get the changes against the latest checked out revision.

[Timo Pietilä]

If you want to go directly to the programs, you can download the GNU Diffutils package.

That's wrong link to diffutils (you posted colordiff twice).

GNU diffutils is a right one.

(EDIT)
Windows diffutils:
DiffUtils for Windows

[Timo Pietilä]

okay I downloaded diiffutils and extracted it from the archive. now what?

what directory do these files have to be in for diff to work?
I don't see any file called diff...?

You probably downloaded diffutils for linux/unix systems.

Here is link for windows utils:

DiffUtils for Windows

[Pete Mack]

If you are doing a diff vs the main (svn) branch, the best option is to use svn diff. (TortoiseSVN explorer plugin has it too.)

[zaimoni]

what directory do these files have to be in for diff to work?
I don't see any file called diff...?

Hmm...wrong archive, then.

When you do have a file called diff.exe , it will need to be in your PATH. I find it simplest to maintain a *NIX-like directory system, and adjust my PATH to make sure the directory corresponding to /bin is in it. [Do this from the System control panel; it's an "advanced" function supposedly, will trigger UAC to adjust it.]

For my MingW32-based setup, I use the following for my *NIX-like directories

c:\bin  [diff and other typical *NIX utilities goes here; in PATH]
c:\etc [for bash and a few other utilities]
c:\usr\local\include [for GCC]
c:\usr\local\lib [for GCC]

Note that this is not a standard MingW32 install, I'm breaking practically all typical install shell scripts in exchange for having everything "just work" almost everywhere on the main hard drive.

For working in C++, the following are also in my PATH

c:\dev.tools\bin [unpack binutils in c:\dev.tools so I can update without trashing my GCC installs]
c:\MingW32\bin [rename whatever MingW32 compiler suite's directory I want to work in to this]

I currently have installed:

c:\MingW32.345 [3.4.5 works, binaries tend to be bloated]
c:\MingW32.421 [4.2.1 works, atexit and friends highly unstable]
c:\MingW32.433 [4.3.3 works]
c:\MingW32.441 [4.4.1 won't build libJPEG or libPNG by generating invalid assembly, so generally useless]
c:\MingW32.450 [4.5.0 won't build libJPEG or libPNG by generating invalid assembly, so generally useless]

I normally use MingW32 4.3.3 unless specifically checking backward compatibility, or faced with source code that ICE's on 4.3.3.

[will_asher]

You probably downloaded diffutils for linux/unix systems.

Here is link for windows utils:

DiffUtils for Windows

Ah yes, that would probably be my problem. thanks

Nice that I can get diffutils without having to learn how to use MingW32 or svn. I've never used either and I don't think it's worthwhile for me to learn them. I don't really plan to become a serious programmer.

[Pete Mack]

You don't have to be a serious programmer to use source control. It is very, very useful if you are maintaining a long-term project.

[AnonymousHero]

Ah yes, that would probably be my problem. thanks

Nice that I can get diffutils without having to learn how to use MingW32 or svn. I've never used either and I don't think it's worthwhile for me to learn them. I don't really plan to become a serious programmer.

You shouldn't learn svn, but you should learn something simpler like Mercurial (hg) or Bazaar (bzr). Neither of those require any server type setup and source control is essential for long-term maintenance on any project. (I know it may be hard to imagine if you haven't tried, but just trust me. You'll be happier for it.)

[will_asher]

Yeah, I'm just now getting around to continuing what I was doing here..
Anyway, I have now installed the windows version of diffutils, and I have the same questions I had before. There still doesn't seem to be any executible.
(It could really use some better documentation. All the documentation seems to assume you can get the command prompt to recognise what 'diff' means)

okay I downloaded diiffutils and extracted it from the archive. now what?

what directory do these files have to be in for diff to work?
I don't see any file called diff...?

[Timo Pietilä]

Yeah, I'm just now getting around to continuing what I was doing here..
Anyway, I have now installed the windows version of diffutils, and I have the same questions I had before. There still doesn't seem to be any executible.
(It could really use some better documentation. All the documentation seems to assume you can get the command prompt to recognise what 'diff' means)

Binaries are in %programfiles%\GnuWin32\bin You might need to add that to path.

[will_asher]

Binaries are in %programfiles%\GnuWin32\bin You might need to add that to path.

How do you do that?

EDIT: nevermind, I did a google search and found how to change the path.