diffoscope (previously known as debbindiff) tries 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 also compare two tarballs, ISO images, or PDF just as easily.
diffoscope 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 free and open source software.
Features include:
- Command-line interface.
- Text and HTML output.
- File formats supported include: Android APK files, Android boot images, Apple Xcode mobile provisioning files, ar(1) archives, Berkeley DB database files, bzip2 archives, character/block devices, ColorSync colour profiles (.icc), Coreboot CBFS filesystem images, cpio archives, Dalvik .dex files, Debian buildinfo files, Debian .changes files, Debian source packages (.dsc), Device Tree Compiler blob files, directories, ELF binaries, ext2/ext3/ext4/btrfs/fat filesystems, FreeDesktop Fontconfig cache files, FreePascal files (.ppu), Gettext message catalogues, GHC Haskell .hi files, GIF image files, Git repositories, GNU R database files (.rdb), GNU R Rscript files (.rds), Gnumeric spreadsheets, GPG keybox databases, Gzipped files, Hierarchical Data Format database, ISO 9660 CD images, Java .class files, Java .jmod modules, JavaScript files, JPEG images, JSON files, LLVM IR bitcode files, LZ4 compressed files, MacOS binaries, Microsoft Windows icon files, Microsoft Word .docx files, Mono ‘Portable Executable’ files, Mozilla-optimized .ZIP archives, Multimedia metadata, OCaml interface files, Ogg Vorbis audio files, OpenOffice .odt files, OpenSSH public keys, OpenWRT package archives (.ipk), PDF documents, PE32 files, PGP signatures, PGP signed/encrypted messages, PNG images, PostScript documents, Public Key Cryptography Standards (PKCS) files (version #7), RPM archives, Rust object files (.deflate), SQLite databases, SquashFS filesystems, symlinks, tape archives (.tar), tcpdump capture files (.pcap), text files, TrueType font files, WebAssembly binary module, XML binary schemas (.xsb), XML files, XZ compressed files, ZIP archives and Zstandard compressed files.
- Fallback on hexdump comparison.
- Fuzzy-matching to handle renamings.
Website: diffoscope.org
Support: Salsa Code Repository
Developer: Many contributors
License: GNU General Public License version 3.0
diffoscope is written in Python. Learn Python with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
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