RCompare is a file and directory comparison toolkit built around a Rust core with both command-line and graphical interfaces. Its PySide6 desktop application provides a broad comparison environment rather than simply presenting a textual diff.
The software is suited to tasks such as verifying backups, checking synchronised directory trees, validating deployments and examining data files. Different file types are handled with specialised comparison engines, while its directory scanner can use hashes, metadata and ignore rules to decide where content differs.
The graphical frontend adds file-management and synchronisation tools on top of the comparison engine, making RCompare useful for both inspection and practical directory maintenance.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Performs parallel directory traversal and can verify files with BLAKE3 hashes backed by a persistent cache.
- Provides a PySide6 graphical frontend with multi-session tabs and persistent user settings.
- Offers dedicated text, image and hexadecimal comparison views.
- Supports text comparison with syntax highlighting, configurable whitespace handling, case-insensitive matching and regular-expression rules.
- Compares images pixel by pixel with configurable tolerance and optional EXIF metadata comparison.
- Provides structural comparison for CSV, Excel, JSON, YAML and Parquet data.
- Compares ZIP, TAR and 7Z-family archive contents through a virtual file-system layer.
- Supports gitignore-style patterns for excluding files and directories.
- Includes copy, move, delete, rename, touch, new-folder and synchronisation actions in the graphical interface.
- Provides a folder synchronisation preview showing planned operations before changes are applied.
- Stores session profiles and can restore paths, filters and comparison options.
- Supports optional S3, SSH/SFTP and WebDAV storage access.
- Offers JSON output from the command line for scripting and automation.
- Includes a patch engine capable of parsing, applying and serialising several diff formats.
Website: github.com/aecs4u/rcompare
Support:
Developer: aecs4u
License: MIT License
RCompare is written in Rust. Learn Rust with our recommended free books and free tutorials. Learn Python 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.
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