Download DiffMerge 4.2.1 for Mac from our software library for free. The most popular versions of the program are 4.2 and 3.3. DiffMerge can be installed on Mac OS X 10.6 or later. The bundle identifier for this application is com.sourcegear.DiffMerge. The current setup file available for download requires 10.3 MB of hard disk space.
Installing latexdiff on a Mac (without having MacTeX installed e.g. If you use an online LaTeX editor): Install Homebrew, the missing package manager for Mac - Install perl - brew install perl (N.B. This step might not be necessary) Install latexdiff - brew install latexdiff Keep latexdiff up-to-date - brew upgrade latexdiff.
First confirm that /usr/local/bin/diffmerge is present. If you used the PKG Installer, this was installed when /Applications/DiffMerge.app was installed.
Diff is a bit of an overkill in this case since I was not interested in the details of differences between the two dir structures, I just wanted to know whether they're the same or not. I noticed a long time ago that we don't have dircmp in OS X. May find Apple's Portable Home Directory feature of Mac OS X Server helpful. I haven't used.
Diff -rq path to folder 1 path to folder 2 Additionally, you can use diff to compare files instead of folders by dragging a couple of those onto Terminal instead: That tells me which lines are.
Let's say you've copied an older version of a folder off of your backup drive, and you need to find out how its contents compare to the current version on your Mac. A lot of folks don't know that there's a built-in way to do that, and it's pretty easy to use and understand. It's accessed through the Terminal, so first you'll open that program from your Applications> Utilities folder.
When you've got it ready to go, type diff in at the prompt followed by a space, and then drag the two folders you want to compare and drop them on the Terminal window. It doesn't matter what order you do this in, and you don't have to type a space in between, either.
That'll make Terminal fill in the paths to those folders for you, and you should see something like this:
Press Return to implement the command, and your Terminal window will fill with delicious data.
Holy crap, that's a lot of gobbledygook. The thing is, though, that the gobbledygook is pretty interesting. From it, I can tell that I've got two JPEG files with the same name but different content:
I see that one file only lives in the copy and is missing from the original folder:
And I also find that a text file has different content than its counterpart:
(I typed 'text differs' within one of them to show you how it'd look.)
So that's all pretty handy, but you have a few options you can add on, too, to make things even better. For example, you can use the '-r' option to force the command to search all subfolders, like so:
Another often-used choice is '-q,' which'll output less-detailed text that only tells you whether files differ and not how they differ. This makes your results much easier to read! Of course, you can combine this with the '-r' option, too.
Additionally, you can use diff to compare files instead of folders by dragging a couple of those onto Terminal instead:
That tells me which lines are different and how.
Finally, just as with a lot of Terminal commands, you can send the results to a file instead of just into a Terminal window. This is often much easier to read and work with, but it does require you to be a bit familiar with things like paths. For this, you'll use the pipe ('>') command, like so:
I know that looks complicated, but the English translation of it is 'compare the two folders I've listed here, and send the results to a file on my Desktop called comparison.txt.' Note that if you use one pipe ('>'), as I've done above, that tells Terminal to overwrite a file that exists with that name, if any; if you use two pipes ('>>'), it asks Terminal to add to any existing files. So you could compare many different folders and pipe the results out to the same file, using the double-pipe every time to force it to add to your text rather than replacing it.
Xml Diff Mac Os X
Neat, right? Not scary at all, is it? OK, Terminal's a little scary for some folks. I figure that certain people get reminded of playing text-based adventures like Zork way back when; you won't get eaten by a grue, I promise.
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I use rsync alot myself to copy files from and to work. Any projects Im currently working on for an extended period of time get their own folder and rsynced between work and home. Though Im usually good about rsyncing before I leave work or home, I forget occassionally. So I dont accidentally overwrite any changes - I usually use the -n flag. That does a 'dry run' of rsync showing possible changes without actually making them.
Some time ago I was looking for a tool to binary-compare two directories too. Diff is a bit of an overkill in this case since I was not interested in the details of differences between the two dir structures, I just wanted to know whether they're the same or not.
I've found only one GUI application that would satisfy my needs, it was Kdiff3. However there's a lot more simple and elegant solution. :-) Start a shell and enter the dir that you want to compare with another, then run a 'find':
cd /path/to/dir1 find . -type f -not -exec cmp {} /path/to/dir2/{} ';' -print
This will print the name of each file that differs between the two directories.
It seems to me that any items uniquely found in dir2 won't be reported by the find command.
make sure to format this command exactly the same and including these: ' ' when needed find . -type f -not -exec cmp {} /path/to/dir2/{} ';' -print I really just wanted to thank you and everyone in this thread. Relocating and cleaning up my mothers age old backup folder that is filled with duplicates has been made so much easier. You have all my grattitudes.
Mac Os X 10.11 Download Free
Some people may haven't found the feature, yet, but Toast has a 'Compare' function hidden in the Utilities menu, it'll provide a nice colored output of the differences. And TextWrangler also supports diffing of folders.
I prefer the use of Subversion to stay in sync with several computers with different OS-es. There good clients available for OSX like svnX
I too am trying to keep a desktop and a laptop in sync - both running OSX. Of course the laptop has much less hd space which means I need to be selective. I have been using Unison very successfully so far for documents in general and for certain application preferences. It is very fast and a pleasure to use. The complications come in due to the fact that applications do not always play nice with copying preferences and the like. For some apps, I haven't figured out which pref and support files are safe to copy. For example, taking a simple-minded approach to syncing causes MS Office to sort of re-install itself each time. Firefox preference copying is also not obvious to me. Is anyone else sync'ing app preferences and executables? Also, I am curious how people are using Subversion.
This hint makes me realise I'm not alone in thinking there must be simpler solution to the problem of keeping a directory in sync between work and home computers, without having to lug an external hard drive around. I need to keep a large (about 5GB) directory of pdf files in sync between a work PC and a home Mac, all sorted into appropriate sub-directories. I currently do this manually by copying any changed files onto a flash memory stick and then copying them onto the other machine when I get home. The flash drive is not big enough to contain a copy of the entire directory, but can easily hold just the changed files. Ideally, some little program or script would identify added or changed files, copy them to the flash drive, then put them into the corresponding sub-directory when the flash drive was connected to the other machine. Then it would repeat the process in the opposite direction. Synchronization utilities are no good as they require a disk big enough to hold the entire directory. Unison is no good as it requires a network connection between the 2 machines (which most admins baulk at). Anyone have any other ideas?
I too am trying to keep a desktop and a laptop in sync - both running OSX. Of course the laptop has much less hd space which means I need to be selective. I have been using Unison very successfully so far for documents in general and for certain application preferences. It is very fast and a pleasure to use. The complications come in due to the fact that applications do not always play nice with copying preferences and the like. For some apps, I haven't figured out which pref and support files are safe to copy. For example, taking a simple-minded approach to syncing causes MS Office to sort of re-install itself each time. Firefox preference copying is also not obvious to me. Is anyone else sync'ing app preferences and executables? Also, I am curious how people are using Subversion.
After reading your comment, I found a perl script on CPAN that implements dircmp. The URL is. http://search.cpan.org/~schulte/File-Dircmp-1.30/Dircmp.pm I have not tried it, though. -Mark
I have a question about this hint.... I'm not too well versed in terminal, but I'd love to do this with my two music folders (one on my external HD,and one on my internal). Do I put all of that code into terminal (including the '|'s) in one line, or do I run them as three separate commands in succession? Also, where does this diffs.txt show up? Thanks!
Put it all on one line. The diff.txt file will show up in your working directory. If you just started terminal and did not change directories, this will be your home directory (i.e., not the Desktop or Document directories). One tip: to quickly enter the two folders you want compare, first type the diff -rq command. Then drag-and-drop the first folder onto the terminal. The path will automatically appear. Then drag-and-drop the second folder. Then type the rest of the command.
Diff-pdf Mac Os X
Users trying to sync home directories between two computers (say a laptop and a desktop) may find Apple's Portable Home Directory feature of Mac OS X Server helpful. I haven't used it, so I can't say how well it works.