Diffoscope – In-depth comparison of files, archives, and directories
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Submission timeline
2007–2026One slot for every year since HN launched. Height is that year's peak points; orange marks a 100+ point or 50+ comment breakout. Select a bar to open its strongest thread.
First comments on top threads
HN comment orderFWIW, this tool is first developed by Debian for their reproducible builds toolchain for inspecting differences, then passed down(or up?) to reproducible builds consortium/effort.
When I was working on Othernet (www.othernet.is), I wanted to do Over-The-Air updates of our firmware. Over a unidirectional, slow (~20kbps), broadcast satellite link with significant packet dropout this was quite a challenge. Amongst the many tools that helped in making it work was diffoscope. I used it to make our buildroot-based firmware have deterministic, minimal-diff build, thus reducing the amount of update I needed to send out. For a few weeks, I simply iterated between building the firmware, using…
The first top-level comment from each of the four biggest threads, in HN’s own order. Excerpts are shortened; open a comment for full context.
- Breakout years
- 2
- Total points
- 333
- Total comments
- 33
100+ points or 50+ comments
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
Every submission
| Date | Title as submitted | By | Points | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018-04-26 | Diffoscope: in-depth comparison of files, archives, and directories | ingve | 2 | 0 |
| 2021-04-07 | Diffoscope: In-depth comparison of files, archives, and directories | Tomte | 3 | 0 |
| 2021-06-17 | Diffoscope: In-depth comparison of files, archives, and directories | edward | 3 | 0 |
| 2021-07-16 | Diffoscope: In-depth comparison of files, archives, and directories | kennethko | 1 | 0 |
| 2021-11-29 | Diffoscope: In-depth comparison of files, archives, and directories | 1_player | 2 | 0 |
| 2022-09-07 | Diffoscope – In-depth comparison of files, archives, and directories | gjvc | 3 | 0 |
| 2022-11-01 | Diffoscope – In-depth comparison of files, archives, and directoriesFirst breakout · Best thread | capableweb | 178 | 19 |
| 2024-04-07 | Diffoscope – In-depth comparison of files, archives, and directoriesLatest 20+ point return | frankjr | 141 | 14 |