snapdiff can compare two snapshots of a directory tree, which have been captured at different points in time. (Think of a “snapshot” as a backup of the original directory tree, in the sense of a full copy.) It diffs the two snapshots, and summarizes how many files are identical, and how many have been moved, modified, added, or deleted. That way, you get a high-level insight into how the data evolved between both snapshots.
Learn more in this blog post.
Say, you want to compare two snapshots, one taken at 2023-09-01, and another one taken at 2023-10-01:
$ snapdiff 2023-09-01/ 2023-10-01/
FILES BYTES
G M K B
TOTAL Snap 1 87,243 98,407,188,994
Snap 2 87,319 98,591,738,372
OF WHICH Identical 87,134 97,551,550,976
Moved 38 134,217,728
Added 87 234,881,024
Deleted 11 50,331,648
Modified 147 671,088,644 (+282,172)
The categories are defined as:
- Identical: both snapshots contain a file at the same path with the same contents.
- Moved: both snapshots contain a file with the same contents, but at different paths.
- Added: the second snapshot contains a file whose path or contents is not present in the first snapshot.
- Deleted: the first snapshot contains a file whose path or contents is not present in the second snapshot.
- Modified: both snapshots contain a file at the same path, but with different contents.
snapdiff
[--report PATH]
[--include-dot-paths]
[--include-symlinks]
[--workers N] OR [--workers N1:N2]
[--no-color]
SNAP1 SNAP2
SNAP1 and SNAP2 are in “chronological” order, so snapshot 1 is assumed to precede snapshot 2.
See also snapdiff --help for info.
Example: --report ./my-report.txt
Print a detailed report to a file.
The file will be newly created, so it fails if a file already exists at the target path.
Include files and folders whose name start with a dot (.), instead of ignoring them (which is the default).
Resolve symlinks, instead of ignoring them (which is the default).
Example: --workers 4 or --workers 1:8
The number of workers (CPU cores) to utilize.
0 means that it detects the number of available CPU cores automatically (which is the default).
You can specify two different values, separated by a colon (:), to differentiate between the first and the second snapshot.
Print output in plain text, without colouring.
Prerequisites: Rust toolchain (see Cargo.toml for required version).
Compile via cargo build. (Produces binary to target/debug/snapdiff.)
snapdiff was created by Jan Heuermann. The sources are available under the terms of the MIT license.