"binary diff" utility

Devin Teske devin.teske at fisglobal.com
Fri Jun 29 16:05:04 UTC 2012


On Jun 29, 2012, at 8:53 AM, Wojciech Puchar wrote:

> i have many windows images running over virtualbox. each takes several gigabytes. i use flat image format.
> 
> each differs by very little.
> 
> Is there any program that can do "diff" and keep just a difference between each of them instead copy of whole VM disk??

Try libxdiff…

http://www.freshports.org/textproc/libxdiff/

>From the pkg-descr:

The LibXDiff library implements basic and yet complete functionalities to
create file differences/patches to both binary and text files. The library
uses memory files as file abstraction to achieve both performance and
portability. For binary files, LibXDiff implements (with some modification)
the algorithm described in File System Support for Delta Compression by
Joshua P. MacDonald, while for text files it follows directives described in
An O(ND) Difference Algorithm and Its Variations by Eugene W. Myers. Memory
files used by the library are basically a collection of buffers that store the
file content. There are two different requirements for memory files when passed
to diff/patch functions. Text files for diff/patch functions require that a
single line do not have to spawn across two different memory file blocks.
Binary diff/patch functions require memory files to be compact. A compact
memory files is a file whose content is stored inside a single block.

WWW: 
http://www.xmailserver.org/xdiff-lib.html

-- 
Devin

_____________
The information contained in this message is proprietary and/or confidential. If you are not the intended recipient, please: (i) delete the message and all copies; (ii) do not disclose, distribute or use the message in any manner; and (iii) notify the sender immediately. In addition, please be aware that any message addressed to our domain is subject to archiving and review by persons other than the intended recipient. Thank you.


More information about the freebsd-questions mailing list