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A.10.2 diff examples

The following line produces a Unidiff (‘-u’ flag) between revision 1.14 and 1.19 of ‘backend.c’. Due to the ‘-kk’ flag no keywords are substituted, so differences that only depend on keyword substitution are ignored.

$ cvs diff -kk -u -r 1.14 -r 1.19 backend.c

Suppose the experimental branch EXPR1 was based on a set of files tagged RELEASE_1_0. To see what has happened on that branch, the following can be used:

$ cvs diff -N -r RELEASE_1_0 -r EXPR1

Note the use of the ‘-N’ option to display new files in the diffs, in addition to changes to existing files.

A command like this can be used to produce a context diff between two releases:

$ cvs diff -N -c -r RELEASE_1_0 -r RELEASE_1_1 > diffs

If you are maintaining ChangeLogs, a command like the following just before you commit your changes may help you write the ChangeLog entry. All local modifications that have not yet been committed will be printed.

$ cvs diff -u | less