combinediff(1)

NAME

   combinediff - create a cumulative unified patch from two incremental
   patches

SYNOPSIS

   combinediff [[-p n] | [--strip-match=n]] [[-U n] | [--unified=n]]
               [[-d PAT] | [--drop-context=PAT]] [[-q] | [--quiet]] [[-z]
               | [--decompress]] [[-b] | [--ignore-space-change]] [[-B] |
               [--ignore-blank-lines]] [[-i] | [--ignore-case]] [[-w] |
               [--ignore-all-space]] [[--interpolate] | [--combine]] diff1
               diff2

   combinediff {[--help] | [--version]}

DESCRIPTION

   combinediff creates a unified diff that expresses the sum of two diffs.
   The diff files must be listed in the order that they are to be applied.
   For best results, the diffs must have at least three lines of context.

   Since combinediff doesn't have the advantage of being able to look at
   the files that are to be modified, it has stricter requirements on the
   input format than patch(1) does. The output of GNU diff will be okay,
   even with extensions, but if you intend to use a hand-edited patch it
   might be wise to clean up the offsets and counts using recountdiff(1)
   first.

   Note, however, that the two patches must be in strict incremental
   order. In other words, the second patch must be relative to the state
   of the original set of files after the first patch was applied.

   The diffs may be in context format. The output, however, will be in
   unified format.

OPTIONS

   -p n, --strip-match=n
       When comparing filenames, ignore the first n pathname components
       from both patches. (This is similar to the -p option to GNU
       patch(1).)

   -q, --quiet
       Quieter output. Don't emit rationale lines at the beginning of each
       patch.

   -U n, --unified=n
       Attempt to display n lines of context (requires at least n lines of
       context in both input files). (This is similar to the -U option to
       GNU diff(1).)

   -d pattern, --drop-context=PATTERN
       Don't display any context on files that match the shell wildcard
       pattern. This option can be given multiple times.

       Note that the interpretation of the shell wildcard pattern does not
       count slash characters or periods as special (in other words, no
       flags are given to fnmatch). This is so that "*/basename"-type
       patterns can be given without limiting the number of pathname
       components.

   -i, --ignore-case
       Consider upper- and lower-case to be the same.

   -w, --ignore-all-space
       Ignore whitespace changes in patches.

   -b, --ignore-space-change
       Ignore changes in the amount of whitespace.

   -B, --ignore-blank-lines
       Ignore changes whose lines are all blank.

   -z, --decompress
       Decompress files with extensions .gz and .bz2.

   --interpolate
       Run as "interdiff". See interdiff(1) for more information about how
       the behaviour is altered in this mode.

   --combine
       Run as "combinediff". This is the default.

   --help
       Display a short usage message.

   --version
       Display the version number of combinediff.

BUGS

   The -U option is a bit erratic: it can control the amount of context
   displayed for files that are modified in both patches, but not for
   files that only appear in one patch (which appear with the same amount
   of context in the output as in the input).

SEE ALSO

   interdiff(1)

AUTHOR

   Tim Waugh <twaugh@redhat.com>
       Package maintainer

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Free and Open Source Software