tardiff

tardiff compares two tar archives, including compressed tar files, and shows how their entries differ.

Installation

cargo install tardiff

From a local checkout:

cargo install --path .

Usage

cargo run -- <left.tar> <right.tar>

All options:

Compare two tar archives by entry name, size, and checksum

Usage: tardiff [OPTIONS] <LEFT> <RIGHT>

Arguments:
  <LEFT>   Left-hand archive path
  <RIGHT>  Right-hand archive path

Options:
  -q, --quiet     Suppress progress and diff output. Exit status still indicates equality
  -c, --compact   Use the compact rendering for the selected output mode
  -s, --spacious  Use the spacious rendering for the selected output mode
  -t, --table     Render differences as a table
  -l, --list      Render differences as a single unaligned line per entry
  -h, --help      Print help

Examples:

cargo run -- archive-a.tar archive-b.tar
cargo run -- --table archive-a.tar archive-b.tar
cargo run -- --table --spacious archive-a.tar archive-b.tar
cargo run -- --list --compact archive-a.tar archive-b.tar
cargo run -- --quiet archive-a.tar archive-b.tar

Screenshot

Exit Codes

• 0: archives are equal
• 1: archives differ
• 2: application error

Example Archives

This repo includes a generator for sample archives that exercise the major diff paths:

cargo run --bin generate_examples

That writes:

• examples/left.tar
• examples/right.tar

Then you can try:

cargo run -- examples/left.tar examples/right.tar
cargo run -- --table examples/left.tar examples/right.tar
cargo run -- --table --spacious examples/left.tar examples/right.tar