Diffy is a set of Ant extensions for comparing and versioning directory structures The comparison algorithm is asymmetric in that it treats one directory as the "old" version of the directory structure, and the other as the "new", or target version. It produces enumerations of file and directory elements that list which have been added, changed, deleted, and optionally "moved".

The resulting lists delineate the element-by-element delta between two "revisions" of the same structure. These lists are completely sufficient to drive version control commands with the end result being that the original, "old", structure is tranformed into the "new" structure, and ultimately commited. (I will release additional tasks soon that use this output to perform the actual revisioning against version control systems, like CVS.)

This is useful in a number of situations:

• Importing a newer version of a file set provided by an outside party (say a source tree) and cleanly updating your versioned copy of it.
• Versioning of development release artifacts, where the release repository is separate from the development repository. Thus maintaining revision history across successive releases.

In the build.xml:

    <taskdef resource="diffy.properties">
      <classpath location="lib-path/diffy.jar"/>
    </taskdef>
  
    <target name="diffy">
      <difftree oldDir="${olddir}" newDir="${newdir}" dump="yes"/>
    </target>
        

From the command line:

    ant diffy -Dolddir=C:/path1 -Dnewdir=C:/path2
        

Execution of the <difftree> task causes several <dirset> and <fileset> definitions to be created for the various element categories: fs.files.added, fs.files.changed, etc. Because the dump flag is set, a complete listing of element categories will be displayed.

Downloads:

Change Log:

03/21/06

Initial release