Manual: combinediff

COMBINEDIFF(1)						  Man pages					      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]] [--color=WHEN] [[--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).) If this option is not specified, combinediff will automatically determine the optimal
	   number of path components to strip by finding the smallest value where at least one file matches between the two
	   patches.

       -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. Also makes patch application ignore whitespace when reconstructing files.

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

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

       --color=WHEN
	   colorize the output; WHEN can be 'never', 'always', or 'auto' (default: auto, use 'never' to disable)

       -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 
	   Package maintainer

patchutils						 23 Jan 2009					      COMBINEDIFF(1)