diffyml is a command-line utility that compares YAML documents by their structure rather than by raw line changes.
It’s designed for configuration files, Kubernetes manifests, CI workflows, and repositories where a conventional text diff can make semantic changes hard to follow. The tool parses YAML content, reports meaningful field-level differences, and can compare local files, remote HTTP/HTTPS files, or whole directories.
It includes Kubernetes-aware matching, configurable output formats, Git integration, CI annotations, path filtering, custom colours, and optional masking of sensitive values. diffyml can also be used as a Go library for applications that need structural YAML comparison.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Compares YAML files structurally instead of producing a simple line-based text diff.
- Matches Kubernetes resources by apiVersion, kind, and name, with support for rename detection.
- Offers multiple output formats including detailed, compact, brief, JSON, GitHub, GitLab, and Gitea.
- Compares local files, remote HTTP/HTTPS files, and directories.
- Integrates with Git as an external diff tool for YAML-focused reviews.
- Supports path filtering, regular expression filters, and project-level configuration files.
- Masks Kubernetes Secrets and other sensitive values on request.
- Provides optional natural-language summaries using the Anthropic API.
- Cross-platform support – runs under Linux and macOS.
Website: github.com/szhekpisov/diffyml
Support:
Developer: Sergei Zhekpisov
License: MIT License
diffyml is written in Go. Learn Go with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Terminal-Based Diff Tools | |
|---|---|
| difftastic | Structural diff tool that compares files based on their syntax |
| diff-so-fancy | Attractive diffs with diff-highlight and more |
| delta | Viewer for git and diff output |
| icdiff | An improved colored diff |
| diffoscope | In-depth comparison of files, archives, and directories |
| colordiff | Wrapper for diff with pretty syntax highlighting |
| objdiff | Local diffing tool for decompilation project |
| ydiff | Tool to view colored, incremental diff in a version controlled workspace |
| diffr | Word-by-word diff highlighting utility |
| dyff | diff tool for YAML files |
| Wdiff | Wordwise implementation of diff |
| dwdiff | diff program that operates at the word level |
| diff2html-cli | Generate HTML diffs |
| dirdiff | Compute the differences between two directories |
| csv-diff | Diffing CSV and JSON files |
| csvdiff | Fast diff tool for comparing CSV files |
| sesdiff | Generates a shortest edit script |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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