Using diff to generate a patch on multiple files

[GodEater]

Guys,

quick question here :

I've changed a number of source files, and want to generate diffs for all of them.

Do I have to do diff for each one (and risk missing one I don't remember modifying), or can I do some sort of diff and get all the patches in one file.

I've had a look at the diff man page, and can't seem to quite work out what I need to do. When I tried it with just the directory names, it just told me *which* files were different, it didn't give me the usual "this line changed from this to this" format I expect from a patch.

Sorry for being a numbskull....

[bluebrother]

If you have your source checked out of cvs you can use cvs to do this. This has the advantage that the generated diff is against the newest cvs version.

cvs diff -u your_file_1 your_file_2 etc.
you can also give cvs directories as arguments, even .
cvs diff -u . > your_patchfile.diff

(when running diff without cvs you need to make it recursively -- diff -urb folder)

[GodEater]

Sadly it isn't from CVS - the work firewall / proxy doesn't permit CVS access.

[lowlight]

Make two directory trees containing the original and modified sources respectively: rockbox-devel (unchanged) and rockbox-local (modified).

Code: [Select]

cd rockbox-local
diff -ru ../rockbox-devel ./ > mypatch.diff

Look in the diff for lines like "Only in " these are files that are not present in one of the trees. You can remove those lines.

[arcman]

GodEater
Usually I use this format:

Code: [Select]

diff -Naurp /original_dir /changed_dir > changes.patch

Hint:
MC (Midnight Commander) can browse "patch"("diff") files

[Rincewind]

If you want to learn something huge, you can try emacs, it has a very good diff module (and tons of other useful features).

But emacs has a very steep learning curve...