Text_Diff - A PHP Component that supports multiple diff engines, data types, and output formats.

Source Code
Documentation

Lastest Release October, 2012
License LGPL-2.1
Maintainers Chuck Hagenbuch (as lead), Jan Schneider (as lead)


Engines

native 16K PHP, algorithm is mostly lifted from the perl module
xdiff 4k Pear PHP package. Supports patch & binary files
shell 8K GNU Diffutils' system diff command
string 12K PHP, for parsing diff files, I think


Outputs Formats

  • Context Diff (classic)
  • Wiki-style (inline)
  • Unified (classic)
  • 3 Way (merge)
  • Patch (text or binaries), - uses xdiff or shell

Development tools

* Bug tracker [1] [2]
* Code repository: [1] [2]

Dependencies

Horde_Util 96K These classes provide functionality useful for all kind of applications.
Horde_Exception 40k This class provides the default exception handlers for the Horde Application Framework.
Horde_Translation 32K Translation wrappers.


Related Issues

* #120955: Integrate Diff into Core
* #1821548: Add a "diff" of some kind to the CMI UI

CommentFileSizeAuthor
#4 text_diff-example1.php_.txt691 bytesmitchell
#4 text_diff-example2.php_.txt933 bytesmitchell

Comments

mitchell’s picture

mitchell commented
Project: Drupal core » Diff
Issue summary: View changes

Diff issues

mitchell’s picture

mitchell commented
Title: Add Horde_Text_Diff in Core » Add Text_Diff Component in Core
Project: Diff » Drupal core
sun’s picture

sun
Primary language German
Location Karlsruhe
commented

I think that's a fork of http://pear.php.net/package/Text_Diff

Diff module uses a class from phpwiki:
http://drupalcode.org/project/diff.git/blob/refs/heads/7.x-3.x:/DiffEngi...

This class is not only used for node revision diffs, but also by Features module.

sun’s picture

sun
Primary language German
Location Karlsruhe
commented
Project: Drupal core » Diff
Issue summary: View changes

x

mitchell’s picture

mitchell commented
Project: Diff » Drupal core

> I think that's a fork of http://pear.php.net/package/Text_Diff
They're the same library. The Pear/Text_Diff homepage says that Horde_Text_diff supersedes it. There's also a discussion on pear-dev@lists.php.net, Horde components, deprecating old pear components.

> Diff module uses a class from phpwiki
Yes, but it is an old, invented-here-fork which is slow and very difficult to maintain. Another critical difference is that this library supports 3-way diff-ing, which allows merging configuration updates when there are local changes, as well as, for merging branched-revision workflows, see #1703168-24: [Meta] Ensure that configuration system functionality matches expected workflows for users and devs.

mitchell’s picture

mitchell commented
Project: Drupal core » Diff
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mitchell’s picture

mitchell commented
Project: Diff » Drupal core
StatusFileSize
new text_diff-example2.php_.txt933 bytes
new text_diff-example1.php_.txt691 bytes

Here are two examples, the first is from a project called osmium, and the second is from /Horde_Text_Diff-2.0.0beta1/doc/Horde/Text/Diff/examples/diff.php.

mitchell’s picture

mitchell commented
Project: Drupal core » Diff
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mitchell commented
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mitchell commented
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OnkelTem’s picture

OnkelTem commented
Project: Diff » Drupal core

For me it's clear that the first example is better. +1 for the idea.

mitchell’s picture

mitchell commented
Title: Add Text_Diff Component in Core » Move to Text_Diff library
Project: Drupal core » Diff
Version: 8.x-dev » 7.x-3.x-dev
Component: other » Code

Switching this issue over to Diff module.
---

#458672-10: Use real HTML-Diff algorithm in Drupal Diff module contains a 2-year-old patch to diff.module to use Text_Diff. It was done to support the inline diff view mode. ( https://drupal.org/files/issues/diff.module_2.patch )

#1807350-10: Diff 7.x-3.x field support shows another example use case.

mitchell’s picture

mitchell commented
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gdd’s picture

gdd
he/him
Primary language English
Location Portland, OR
commented

I did some analysis of four native PHP libraries at #1821548-6: Add a "diff" of some kind to the CMI UI for inclusion in core. We have somewhat different requirements for core inclusion than a contrib module does, but that information might still be useful for this issue.

kscheirer’s picture

kscheirer
Primary language English
Location Vallejo
commented

can we postpone this in the interest of getting a stable 7.x-3.0 out? It seems like adopting new libraries will require quite a few code changes, in addition to possibly creating new features in the module.

alan d.’s picture

alan d. commented

This is definitely on hold unless another developer wants to stick their hands up to tackle this! We have had the standard Diff Engine since 4.7.

Note that I am simply waiting for two users to give a green light before tagging the latest dev version as 3.0.

alan d.’s picture

alan d. commented
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development tools

mitchell’s picture

mitchell commented
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Dependencies and other fixes

alan d.’s picture

alan d. commented
Status: Active » Closed (duplicate)

The DiffEngine is now in core (Drupal 8.x) so I'm thinking changes should be done here first and then possibly back ported to Diff 7.x. Otherwise we will end up with two comparison engines in Diff 8.x or loss features when reverting back to the phpwiki version.

As such, marking as duplicate of #1848264: Compare and merge PhpWiki diff*.php with MediaWiki's DairikiDiff.php and DiffEngine.php.

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alan d. commented
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