1COMBINEDIFF(1)                     Man pages                    COMBINEDIFF(1)
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NAME

6       combinediff - create a cumulative unified patch from two incremental
7       patches
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SYNOPSIS

10       combinediff [[-p n] | [--strip-match=n]] [[-U n] | [--unified=n]]
11                   [[-d PAT] | [--drop-context=PAT]] [[-q] | [--quiet]] [[-z]
12                   | [--decompress]] [[-b] | [--ignore-space-change]] [[-B] |
13                   [--ignore-blank-lines]] [[-i] | [--ignore-case]] [[-w] |
14                   [--ignore-all-space]] [[--interpolate] | [--combine]] diff1
15                   diff2
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17       combinediff {[--help] | [--version]}
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DESCRIPTION

20       combinediff creates a unified diff that expresses the sum of two diffs.
21       The diff files must be listed in the order that they are to be applied.
22       For best results, the diffs must have at least three lines of context.
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24       Since combinediff doesn't have the advantage of being able to look at
25       the files that are to be modified, it has stricter requirements on the
26       input format than patch(1) does. The output of GNU diff will be okay,
27       even with extensions, but if you intend to use a hand-edited patch it
28       might be wise to clean up the offsets and counts using recountdiff(1)
29       first.
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31       Note, however, that the two patches must be in strict incremental
32       order. In other words, the second patch must be relative to the state
33       of the original set of files after the first patch was applied.
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35       The diffs may be in context format. The output, however, will be in
36       unified format.
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OPTIONS

39       -p n, --strip-match=n
40           When comparing filenames, ignore the first n pathname components
41           from both patches. (This is similar to the -p option to GNU
42           patch(1).)
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44       -q, --quiet
45           Quieter output. Don't emit rationale lines at the beginning of each
46           patch.
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48       -U n, --unified=n
49           Attempt to display n lines of context (requires at least n lines of
50           context in both input files). (This is similar to the -U option to
51           GNU diff(1).)
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53       -d pattern, --drop-context=PATTERN
54           Don't display any context on files that match the shell wildcard
55           pattern. This option can be given multiple times.
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57           Note that the interpretation of the shell wildcard pattern does not
58           count slash characters or periods as special (in other words, no
59           flags are given to fnmatch). This is so that “*/basename”-type
60           patterns can be given without limiting the number of pathname
61           components.
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63       -i, --ignore-case
64           Consider upper- and lower-case to be the same.
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66       -w, --ignore-all-space
67           Ignore whitespace changes in patches.
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69       -b, --ignore-space-change
70           Ignore changes in the amount of whitespace.
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72       -B, --ignore-blank-lines
73           Ignore changes whose lines are all blank.
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75       -z, --decompress
76           Decompress files with extensions .gz and .bz2.
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78       --interpolate
79           Run as “interdiff”. See interdiff(1) for more information about how
80           the behaviour is altered in this mode.
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82       --combine
83           Run as “combinediff”. This is the default.
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85       --help
86           Display a short usage message.
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88       --version
89           Display the version number of combinediff.
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BUGS

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

98       interdiff(1)
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AUTHOR

101       Tim Waugh <twaugh@redhat.com>
102           Package maintainer
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106patchutils                        23 Jan 2009                   COMBINEDIFF(1)
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