Please support external diff tools such as meld and kdiff3 --diftool

Similar to git git difftool --tool=kdiff3.

changed title from suport external diff tools such as meld and kdiff3 --diftool to Please support external diff tools such as meld and kdiff3 --diftool

Hi @adrelanos-guest, thanks for your request. I'm a little lost how diffoscope might plug into these tools though as, as you know, diffoscope supports nested diffs whilst meld and similar operate on a single "flat" level.

added needs-investigation label

Yes, probably can't mix multiple/all files into one diff viewer process.

Similar to how git interacts great with graphical diff viewers. For each file that needs diffing, open a new process. The process would be blocking and therefore diffoscope would wait until that process terminated.

Ah, interesting idea indeed. Just to understand a bit more, what would you have diffoscope do in the case of detecting changes in the metadata of an archive? For example:

--- /home/lamby/Downloads/a.apk
+++ /home/lamby/Downloads/b.apk
├── zipinfo /dev/stdin
│ @@ -1,8 +1,8 @@
│ -Zip file size: 19637938 bytes, number of entries: 1839
│ +Zip file size: 19637970 bytes, number of entries: 1839
│  -rw----     0.0 fat    36220 b- defN 80-000-00 00:00 AndroidManifest.xml
│  -rw----     2.4 fat     1214 b- defN 80-000-00 00:00 META-INF/CERT.RSA
│  -rw----     2.4 fat   215925 b- defN 80-000-00 00:00 META-INF/CERT.SF
│  -rw----     2.4 fat   215863 b- defN 80-000-00 00:00 META-INF/MANIFEST.MF
│  -rw----     2.4 fat        6 bx stor 80-000-00 00:00 META-INF/androidx.activity_activity.version
│  -rw----     2.4 fat        6 bx stor 80-000-00 00:00 META-INF/androidx.appcompat_appcompat-resources.version
│  -rw----     2.4 fat        6 bx stor 80-000-00 00:00 META-INF/androidx.appcompat_appcompat.version
│ @@ -92,15 +92,15 @@
│  -rw----     2.4 fat      559 b- defN 80-000-00 00:00 META-INF/util.runtime.kotlin_module
│  -rw----     2.4 fat       16 b- defN 80-000-00 00:00 META-INF/view_release.kotlin_module
│  -rw----     2.4 fat      477 b- defN 80-000-00 00:00 META-INF/walletcore.kotlin_module
│  -rw----     2.4 fat       76 b- defN 80-000-00 00:00 META-INF/wapi.kotlin_module
│  -rw----     2.4 fat       53 b- stor 80-000-00 00:00 androidsupportmultidexversion.txt
│  -rw----     2.4 fat      137 b- defN 80-000-00 00:00 assets/trusted_packages.json
│  -rw----     2.4 fat  8125884 b- defN 80-000-00 00:00 classes.dex
│ --rw----     2.4 fat  8261304 b- defN 80-000-00 00:00 classes2.dex
│ +-rw----     2.4 fat  8261312 b- defN 80-000-00 00:00 classes2.dex
│  -rw----     2.4 fat  8097704 b- defN 80-000-00 00:00 classes3.dex
│  -rw----     2.4 fat  8834612 b- defN 80-000-00 00:00 classes4.dex
│  -rw----     2.4 fat     1592 b- defN 80-000-00 00:00 com/ledger/wallet/service/ILedgerWalletService.aidl
│  -rw----     2.4 fat      901 b- defN 80-000-00 00:00 com/ledger/wallet/service/ServiceResult.aidl
│  -rw----     2.4 fat    13116 b- defN 80-000-00 00:00 en-mnemonic-word-list.txt
│  -rw----     2.4 fat       68 b- defN 80-000-00 00:00 firebase-common.properties
│  -rw----     2.4 fat       78 b- defN 80-000-00 00:00 firebase-iid-interop.properties

That is a good question. Didn't consider this. --difftool maybe cannot be a full replacement for the current replacement. Just an additional convince feature. You could just run "meld /home/lamby/Downloads/a.apk /home/lamby/Downloads/b.apk" as "simple" implementation and call it a day. Leave it to that diff viewer. Realistically that diff viewer wouldn't show anything interesting. But it would hint the diffoscope to also run without --difftool to see something more helpful.

The part that I was diffing when I wrote this feature request was unrelated to metadata.

And/or additionally echoing this out to stdout as you are currently doing.

mentioned in commit lamby/diffoscope@5b722451

mentioned in merge request !41 (closed)

Hi @adrelanos-guest I've had a little play at this - can we move this conversation to !41 (closed) ? :)

Sure.

closed via commit 5010f522

mentioned in issue #275 (closed)