gap is a graphical text comparison utility designed around a deliberately simple native interface.
Its presentation is inspired by the unified and split diff views commonly found on source-code hosting platforms, making changes easy to recognise without surrounding the comparison with a complete development environment. It can compare individual files as well as corresponding files within two directories. The project also serves as an implementation and demonstration of the linear-space variant of the Myers diff algorithm used by the developer’s fred editor.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Displays text differences in a native graphical interface.
- Compares individual files or complete directory pairs.
- Matches corresponding files when performing directory comparisons.
- Offers both word-based and character-based highlighting within changed blocks.
- Lets you reverse the order of the two compared inputs with a single action.
- Provides expandable and collapsible context around changed sections.
- Can display an unlimited amount of surrounding context.
- Includes a configuration explorer for adjusting application behaviour and appearance.
- Lets users enable or disable line numbers.
- Provides configurable colours and animation settings.
- Includes a help panel with support for rebinding keyboard shortcuts.
- Supports subpixel font rendering.
- Accepts files through drag and drop onto either comparison pane.
- Accepts directories through the graphical directory-comparison view.
- Can be configured as a Git difftool for inspecting repository changes.
- Uses a largely self-contained codebase with few external build dependencies.
Website: github.com/cdacamar/gap
Support:
Developer: Cameron DaCamara
License: MIT License
gap is written in C++. Learn C++ with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| GUI Diff Tools | |
|---|---|
| Meld | Graphical diff viewer and merge application for the Gnome desktop |
| Kompare | KDE diff tool supporting a variety of diff formats |
| Diffuse | Tool for merging and comparing text files |
| TkDiff | Graphical front end to the diff program |
| objdiff | Local diffing tool for decompilation project |
| KDiff3 | Text difference analyzer for up to 3 input files |
| xxdiff | File and directories comparator and merge tool |
| RustDiff | Semantic JSON and XML diff tool |
| RCompare | File and directory comparison toolkit |
| Text Compare | Compare old and new text |
| Image Compare | Side-by-side image comparison tool for spotting differences |
| gap | Simple native graphical utility for comparing text files |
| meld-rs | Visual diff and merge tool for comparing files and directories |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
 LinuxLinks helps you discover the best free and open source software for Linux. Explore our extensive collection of recommended applications, including alternatives to popular proprietary software.We also publish software reviews, Linux tutorials, hardware reviews, free programming books and articles covering the wider open source community. Browse our Linux resources to discover more. Know a useful free and open source Linux application we haven't covered? Suggest a program for inclusion. Has your software been featured on LinuxLinks? Display one of our Featured on LinuxLinks badges on your website or GitHub README. |
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.