wdiff mit Homebrew, apt, dnf, MacPorts, Nix, pacman, zypper installieren

Projektlinks

• Homepage
• Repository
• Upstream-Dokumentation
• Paketmanager-Seite

Befehle und Aliase

• mdiff
• unify
• wdiff
• wdiff2

Projektgeschichte

The GNU wdiff NEWS file records the first public release, version 0.00, in August 1992 by Francois Pinard. Pinard continued the early series through version 0.5 in November 1994, adding behavior such as case-insensitive comparison and standard-input handling.

In June 2007, Denver Gingerich released 0.5.4 and integrated changes from Pinard's 0.5g work from November 1998, including internationalized program messages and short manual pages for related tools. Martin von Gagern then revived the package with version 0.6.0 in March 2010, described by GNU as the first official release in a long time, and moved development from CVS to Bazaar.

The package reached version 1.0.0 in September 2011, with the version bump explicitly marking maturity. Later releases improved translations, Unicode and pager behavior, gnulib integration, and build-system maintenance. GNU lists version 1.2.2 from April 2014 as a release by Martin von Gagern and names him as the current maintainer on the project page.

Wie es verwendet wird

The basic command compares an old file and a new file and prints an annotated copy of the new file. The default markers can be replaced with custom strings, terminal highlighting, less-compatible highlighting, LaTeX or troff markup, or ANSI color sequences.

wdiff can also consume a unified diff with the -d option, which makes it a post-processor for version-control output. Its companion tools include mdiff for multi-difference or cluster-oriented comparison, unify for converting context diffs and unified diffs, and wdiff2 as an experimental successor using mdiff as its backend.

Warum Paket-Nerds sich dafür interessieren

wdiff is one of the small GNU text-processing tools that fills a gap left by line-based diff. It is not a version-control system feature or a rich review UI; it is a composable filter that can be piped into pagers, formatters, sed scripts, or documentation workflows.

For package-history purposes, it is also a neat example of GNU maintenance continuity: an early-1990s utility by Francois Pinard, revived and modernized in the 2010s with gnulib, gettext, autotools, translation updates, and Bazaar-hosted development.

Zeitleiste

• 1992-08: wdiff 0.00 is released by Francois Pinard.
• 1994-11: wdiff 0.5 is released, still in the Pinard-led early series.
• 2007-06: wdiff 0.5.4 integrates older 0.5g-era work and adds packaging/documentation improvements.
• 2010-03: wdiff 0.6.0 becomes the first official release in a long time and switches source control from CVS to Bazaar.
• 2011-09: wdiff 1.0.0 is released to reflect package maturity.
• 2014-04: wdiff 1.2.2 updates translations, gnulib, and autotools.

Related projects

• wdiff builds on GNU diffutils diff and is distributed in the GNU ecosystem alongside tools such as gettext, gnulib, and other command-line text processors. Its own manual also documents mdiff, unify, and wdiff2.

Quellen

• https://github.com/jwilk-mirrors/wdiff/blob/trunk/NEWS
• https://www.gnu.org/software/wdiff/
• https://www.gnu.org/software/wdiff/manual/wdiff.html