Sometimes you are in a situation that requires to verify whether two MySQL tables have the same structure.

There are multiple ways to do this (using GUI reverse engineer tools, use SHOW CREATE TABLE and compare manually), but personally I do prefer the straight SQL way because it is most flexible and you can customize the output to fit your needs.

The idea is to use the INFORMATION_SCHEMA to query which columns are in the two tables, compare their types & attributes if they exist in both and report any differences. If a column is only present in one of the tables, it will be reported as well (this is achieved through an outer join).

Here we go:

SET @t1='orig_table'; /* name of table 1, adjust to your needs */
SET @t2='backup_table'; /* name of table 2, adjust to your needs */

/* no need to adjust the below query if you can live with its output */
(SELECT t1.COLUMN_NAME AS t1_field,TRIM(REPLACE(CONCAT(t1.COLUMN_TYPE,IF(t1.IS_NULLABLE='NO',' NOT NULL',''),' DEFAULT ',IFNULL(QUOTE(t1.COLUMN_DEFAULT),'NULL'),' ',t1.EXTRA,' ',t1.COLUMN_KEY),'  ',' ')) AS t1_type,t2.COLUMN_NAME AS t2_field,TRIM(REPLACE(CONCAT(t2.COLUMN_TYPE,IF(t2.IS_NULLABLE='NO',' NOT NULL',''),' DEFAULT ',IFNULL(QUOTE(t2.COLUMN_DEFAULT),'NULL'),' ',t2.EXTRA,' ',t2.COLUMN_KEY),'  ',' ')) AS t2_type FROM (SELECT COLUMN_NAME,COLUMN_TYPE,IS_NULLABLE,COLUMN_DEFAULT,COLUMN_KEY,EXTRA FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS WHERE TABLE_SCHEMA=DATABASE() AND TABLE_NAME=@t1) t1 LEFT JOIN (SELECT COLUMN_NAME,COLUMN_TYPE,IS_NULLABLE,COLUMN_DEFAULT,COLUMN_KEY,EXTRA FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS WHERE TABLE_SCHEMA=DATABASE() AND TABLE_NAME=@t2) t2 ON (t1.COLUMN_NAME=t2.COLUMN_NAME) HAVING t1_field IS NULL OR t1_type!=t2_type) UNION DISTINCT (SELECT t1.COLUMN_NAME AS t1_field,TRIM(REPLACE(CONCAT(t1.COLUMN_TYPE,IF(t1.IS_NULLABLE='NO',' NOT NULL',''),' DEFAULT ',IFNULL(QUOTE(t1.COLUMN_DEFAULT),'NULL'),' ',t1.EXTRA,' ',t1.COLUMN_KEY),'  ',' ')) AS t1_type,t2.COLUMN_NAME AS t2_field,TRIM(REPLACE(CONCAT(t2.COLUMN_TYPE,IF(t2.IS_NULLABLE='NO',' NOT NULL',''),' DEFAULT ',IFNULL(QUOTE(t2.COLUMN_DEFAULT),'NULL'),' ',t2.EXTRA,' ',t2.COLUMN_KEY),'  ',' ')) AS t2_type FROM (SELECT COLUMN_NAME,COLUMN_TYPE,IS_NULLABLE,COLUMN_DEFAULT,COLUMN_KEY,EXTRA FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS WHERE TABLE_SCHEMA=DATABASE() AND TABLE_NAME=@t1) t1 RIGHT JOIN (SELECT COLUMN_NAME,COLUMN_TYPE,IS_NULLABLE,COLUMN_DEFAULT,COLUMN_KEY,EXTRA FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS WHERE TABLE_SCHEMA=DATABASE() AND TABLE_NAME=@t2) t2 ON (t1.COLUMN_NAME=t2.COLUMN_NAME) HAVING t1_field IS NULL OR t1_type!=t2_type);

Note: neither does this take into account secondary indexes, character sets and collations nor column privileges.

Вот такая заметка про прикручивание одной полезной фичи к уже горячо любимой мной Eclipse только что попросилась в блог. Ситуация обстоит в следующем – имеем два файла с кодом, которые нужно сравнить на предмет различий. Самый простойспособ это сделать – это выделить их в ProjectExplorer, вызвать контекстное меню и выбрать там пункт CompareWith -> Each Other, после чего мы видим довольно унылое стандартное окно показывающее diff’ы между файлами. Так как мне кажется, что удобнее использовать внешнюю программу для анализа различий, то постараемся настроить работу например с WinMerge (GPL).

Для начала нам потребуется плагин Exentral Diff Tool, загрузить который можно здесь. Вся суть плагина заключается в добавлении дополнительного пункта  Compare With Exentral Tool в контекстном меню и возможности в настройках программы указать внешнюю утилиту.

Скачиваем, распаковываем в папку Plugins в папке с Eclipse, затем делаем File -> Restart, после чего плагин будет извесен нашей IDE.

Теперь скачиваем внешнюю программу для сравнения файлов (в данный момент я все еще нахожусь под Windows, но скоро меняю платформу), для Windows один из лучших инструментов – WinMerge. Скачать ее можно здесь.  После чего устанавливаем и переходим к настройке Eclipse.

Для настройки Eclipse идем в  меню Window -> Preferences -> General -> Compare Exentral Tool, нажимаем Browse и указываем путь к *.exe файлу WinMerge.

После этого пробуем использовать плагин, выбираем в Project Explorer два файла, которые необходимо сравнить, затем CompareWith -> Each Other (Exentral Tool) и увидим, что запустился WinMerge

До:

После:

Ссылки по теме:

Что такое diff: http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diff

Сайт программы WinMerge: http://winmerge.org/

vimdiff file1 file2

Ctrl-w-w – переключиться в другое окно.

*do*
do Same as “:diffget” without argument or range. The “o” stands
for “obtain” (“dg” can’t be used, it could be the start of
“dgg”!).

*dp*
dp Same as “:diffput” without argument or range.

Источник: http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/diff.html
Смотрите также: www.vim.org

The plug-in to browse Mercurial repositories was updated, it now handles more cases correctly.

The idea behind these plug-ins is that you can thus compare a specific tag or revision in your Mercurial repository with your local hard drive, an FTP site but as well with a Visual Source Safe, a SubVersion or whichever other SCC that ECMerge supports (see SCC Tool Dialog Box).

This new plug-in version is included in the upcoming 2.2.106 version.

Have a good week
Armel

Adesso adesso ho avuto questo output durante il mio solito e giornaliero aggiornamento mattutino… girando in rete ho trovato la soluzione:

apt-get update -o Acquire::Pdiffs=false

Dopodiché, tutto va alla grande

È una cosa temporanea, ma meglio di niente!

77 Windows 7-Tips by Jeffrey Hick, Don Jones, Pav Cherny, J. Peter Bruzzese and Bill Boswell.

Webcast zur Windows Power Shell 2.0 by Holger Schwichtenberg. In this first of three episodes he talks about Commandlets, Pipelining, direct use of .NET- and WMI-Classes and remote access.

Java: If you want to have the diff between two lists (Arrays.asList(“a”, “b”, “c”) vs. Arrays.asList(“a”, “c”, “d”)), then you should have a look at this blog entry.

Microsoft Press publishes a new eBook “Deploying Windows 7″ for free. It is an introduction by the authors from Windows 7 Resource Kit and TechNet Magazine.

If you are interested in Darth Vaders daily routine … here are some pictures.

DE: Webcast: NET for JEE-Developer – In this first of six episodes Golo Roden shows “From Java to C#”

With “Mastering PowerShell” there is another free eBook available. Content: The PowerShell Console, Interaktive PowerShell, Varables, Arrays and Hashtables, The PowerShell Pipeline.

diff で比較を行う場合、比較対象となるファイルが見つからない場合、次のように”No such file or directory”とエラー出力される。

$ mkdir diff-N-test
$ cd diff-N-test
$ echo abc > a
$ diff -u a b
diff: b: No such file or directory

このような場合は -N オプションを指定することで、空の対象ファイルが存在するものと仮定した上で、差分表示させることが可能。

$ diff -uN a b
--- a   2009-10-25 11:12:47.000000000 +0900
+++ b   1970-01-01 09:00:00.000000000 +0900
@@ -1 +0,0 @@
-abc

help では次のように記載されている。

-N –new-file Treat absent files as empty.

ユースケースとしては、ディレクトリを2つ指定して、before/after を明示的に表示させたい場合など。

The heaviest hitters in the online world believe the Internet has to remain open and available. Some of the biggest sites including Amazon, Digg and Facebook signed a letter this week along with more than a dozen other companies, asking FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski to keep the Internet open.

Here’s a portion of the letter they sent this week:   An open Internet fuels a competitive and efficient marketplace, where consumers make the ultimate choices about which products succeed and which fail. This allows businesses of all sizes, from the smallest startup to larger corporations, to compete, yielding maximum economic growth and opportunity.

America’s leadership in the technology space has been due, in large part, to the open Internet. We applaud your leadership in initiating a process to develop rules to ensure that the qualities that have made the Internet so successful are protected.

These companies represent the biggest of the online private sector world. Many of them make heaps of money online. They see that allowing a handful of companies to limit the Internet would hurt commerce, cost jobs and wreck the exchange of free speech we enjoy online today.

Read the entire letter here, courtesy of the Open Internet Coalition.

What’s New in the .NET Framework Version 3.5

What’s New in the .NET Framework Version 3.5 SP1.

What’s New in the .NET Framework Version 3.0.

What’s New in the .NET Framework Version 2.0.

.NET Framework 3.5 Architecture.

Ahh so we got the welded diff on. Then went to autozone for a few things, an Osman’s tire went completely flat. Long story short. He has my S3O’s spare again. I left my phone at home so no pics. I’ll try an get a few of him learnin to drift soon.

Binary diff is definitely not a simple affair.

We are working on the new differentiation engine. If you have any idea about what you’d like to have in the diff engine of your dreams it’s time to tell!

Regards
Armel

“…än så länge verkar det vara enkelt och bra, sen är det såklart som man brukar säga; att djävulen går i detaljerna här.”

- Håkan Hedenmalm, föreläsning i diff och int (ang. trigonometriska funktioner).

To see what changes a remote branch would make if you merged it into yours, try something like this:

bzr merge --preview lp:~spiv/bzr/insert-stream-check-chks-part-2|tee /tmp/spiv.diff

Have you ever been annoyed trying to compare large directories and waiting for hours for the result of Apple’s FileMerge tool? Or even Terminal’s “diff -rq …”?

The problem here is that both actually *scan* through all the files to find differences inside. But, especially when consolidating your hard disks, you would like to only compare file creation date and size, making the diff MUCH faster. Unfortunately, the GNU “diff” tool doesn’t offer a switch to only compare sizes/timestamps. The solution comes from a tool that was originally designed for synchronizing file structures remotely (hence the name): “rsync”. Here’s what to do:

Go to spotlight, enter “Terminal”
enter:

rsync -rvn --delete /FirstDirectory /SecondDirectory

the output is what rsync *would* have done to synchronize the two directories.

Explanation of the switches:

-r: Recursive

-v: Verbose (so you actually get the information)

-n: "not" (dry-run)

--delete: Not only create new files on the other side, but also delete those which are NOT on the first side.

Well, it’s now t-minus 15 hours to kick off and the car is just about done!

I’ve spent the last couple of evenings rebuilding the front struts and changing the oil in them.

One of the valves had blown clean out of the damper tube…That’ll be why I had no damping then!

All back together:

Re-fitted the struts, checked the ride height, then changed the diff oil.

Tomorrow I need to pack, sort out some tools and wash it!

It appears all the flies in the world decided to take me on. I won.

People who are in the process of getting familiar with programming for the web using Java would have come across these two terms: JSP and servlet. And I have seen my peers getting quite perplexed with what the two meant and why there were two seemingly similar ways of doing the same thing.

Well, I havent been able to verbalise the differences between the two exactly, but still a small attempt on my part -

Servlet
Servlet is a Java object. It extends or adds to the capabilities of a HTTP server. It is a program, which means you type out your servlet, compile it using javac and load the byte code class file into the server’s webapp folder. Next time you change a feature in your servlet, you recompile it and reload the class file into the server. The HTTP server provides an environment for a web application to run, and servlets add to the HTTP server’s capability in providing the right environment, and right response to requests.

One can generate output from within a servlet, only by putting the output in the System.out.println, which will be sent to the browser as a response. And when we get output in a browser, it is instinctive to add HTML tags to the output and beautify it.

Picture this: I have a webapplication written using servlet with a well formatted output. But after a while, I want to change the way the output is displayed in the browser without making any changes to the way the application works behind the scenes. To achieve this, I have to filter through all the Java code, pick all the S.O.Ps and rewrite them. The recompile and reload. What if there was an easier way to do this? What if I dint have to wade through application logic statements to change the front end? This is what JSP was created for.

JSP
JSP is Java in a scripting language format.

One has to compile and generate an executable from a program to see its output. A script on the other hand is compiled on the fly. So we write a script and upload, no need to compile it.

JSP can be embedded in HTML. So there is a kind of division of labour. JSP handles the dynamism required in the presentation, while application logic is handled by somebody else(typically a Java Bean).

To quote San Shing of www.javapassion.com fame, “JSP is a follow-on technology to the servlet.” So it retains all the benefits over the servlet, while overcoming its shortcomings.

So, in conclusion, JSP is a Scripting language with the goal being capable of handling the presentation. While Servlet is an extension of the HTTP server, which can give an environment for smaller components and scripts to run inside it.

Preamble

(if you rate this I would like to read your comments about your rating)

There are a multitude of Diff/Merge Utilities out there but this review will cover the Guiffy Diff/Merge Tool and Folder comparison utility v9.x.   Let me be up front:  I own v8.x of Guiffy and really like it a great deal but I don’t own v9.x.  I also own an older version of ExamDiff Pro, and a multitude of others.  What I am trying to say is that I have yet to find a Diff/Merge tool that sets perfect with me and I suspect it’s more of the developer/designer in me that’s always looking for the next feature.  This is not a closed ended review since it takes a long time to get a review done well I tend to add more layers as time goes on:  this is no different.

FYI:  I did this review of Guiffy (trial) on OS X however it runs on Linux (all flavors), OS X, Windows, Solaris, HP-UX, AIX and other Java platforms.  Certainly a good selling point.

Code:  The code snippet I used comes from a very cool site called Java2S.Com (I just made 2 copies and munged them a bit).

Update – 08.22.2009: Guiffy has recently reduced the price for their Diff/Merge tool: was $79 now it is $59 – how cool is that?!!!  There are also tiered steps for multi-user licensing for the team and/or enterprise.  Sometimes good thing increase in price over time but it sure it nice when the price goes down but not the quality!

Update – 08.15.2009: In response to a couple of issues that were found Guiffy released a new build 270 (Build 270 includes 3 bug fixes: 396-398) which resolved all of the issues below.  The content below has been modified accordingly.

I have tried many, many diff tools but I always seem to find some issue with them and move on.  Some of them don’t print print properly, some diff like the old style command line diff with the results on top of each other which really is a pain to visualize the differences (csDiff anyone?).  Those are just a few things off the top of my mind I like to avoid with a diff tool.  So, what to review?  There are a ton of features in the top diff tools these days from basic file compare, to editing, to 3-way merging, to folder diffs and a slew of others,  but what I am most interested in is the following:

• Does the tool do a diff completely by ‘reading’ the files you are comparing and show true differences or does it do a line by line diff with no real intelligence? (I know this is not so common anymore but I have seen it on the lower end, free, tools)
• When a newer version of a file has been reorganized (ie.. moving functions around, reformatting, etc..) is that really a different file?  If no other changes were made then what is the real difference?  To me it’s just layout sugar but I would like the diff tool to be able to ‘know’ that the code is basically the same.  That’s probably asking too much and at this stage I don’t remember how well any of my diff tools does this but I like the idea.
• I want to be able to print my diff results side by side with line numbers – sometimes I just like to read the code without the computer in front of me.
• I would like to be able to tell if one folder has different files in it from another folder – recursively too (not sure if the recursive is a bit much in terms of processing but it would be cool).
• Finally, I would really like to not have to take a loan out to buy a diff tool.  Some of them are very expensive for what it does like Araxis, $269 for the pro license is a bit much to me – more than most professional text editors!

Info on Guiffy

• Current Version: 9.0 (Download)
• Cross Platform (see above)
• Java based
• Price: $66 Single User / $132 3-User (1 license runs on all platforms)
  

Standard Disclaimer

Let me preface this review of mine by saying it is a review of how I see the program and how I felt working with it as well as my impressions from a software developer point of view.  This is not some indirect advertising or some way to push more business to Guiffy.  In other words: this is unpaid. Enough said.

Finally, here’s some links for Guiffy:

Guiffy Home

Documentation

Screen Shots

Features

Release Notes

Contents

Looking Around

What I Did

Off The Top

Recommendation

Looking Around

Here is a picture of how Guiffy looks right after startup.  I really like the clean lines of this program.  Nice and simple without an overwhelming array features on the main screen.

What I Did

File Compare

Here is Guiffy with a diff of two code files which are the same, pretty much what you would expect.  The syntax highlighting is well done:

Here is Guiffy with a diff of the same two code files with one of the files re-arranged but no code changes other than rearranging:

Well, that’s kind of a bummer but not unexpected.  You can see all I did was swap positions of the Main() method from bottom to top but it still counted it as different.  I wonder if there is any diff tool that WILL do a line by line comparison like what I described?  Anyone know of one?

Here is a shot with the files back the way they were but I added 4 spaces and it found the diffs as you would expect:

And here are the same files with the Ignore Leading and Trailing Whitespace option checked (nice option when you have who knows how many developers imprinting their formatting ideas on your source code:

One thing I really like is the speed of the comparisons.  I realize that these are rather small files but the compares for archives and folders are pretty snappy.  That’s a nice thing when you are looking to do your tasks as quickly as possible (ie.. comparing data files when you are doing troubleshooting for a client waiting for a fix).

So, that’s it for my File Comparisons.  Next, let’s tackle Archives and Folders.

Archive Compare (new for v9)

To test Archive Compare I compared the .zip files of two different versions of the Guiffy installer.  Archive selection shares the same dialog as the Folder Compare and works like you would expect.

The actually comparison was fairly quick and accurate (I compared gufins86.zip and gufins90.zip) and displayed the results as if I were comparing folders (which essentially this is a similar operation) in hierarchical fashion.  The nice thing is that Guiffy actually went into the .app file within the .zip archive (the .app file is the installer) which is nice as some diff tools just stop at unzipping the .zip file.  If that were the case here we would only see the guf86ins.app and gufins90.app files in the compare – glad this is NOT the case with Guiffy.

Here is a screen shot showing the results:

Pretty much what you would expect for an Archive Compare.  I really like the way this worked and I liked the speed that is performed the compare.  Some diff tools that do archive compares spend an enormous amount of time just decompressing the archive folder.

I would like to see .Rar and .7z (7zip) archives as an option for the archive types you can compare since both of these types do exist on most platforms.  Ready to forge on to my final compares:  Folders.

Folder Compare

Ok, so let’s look at a Folder diff of a fairly large chunk of Flex source for a grocery cart (from one of my training books).

I first modified the options by selecting Show SubFolders (Recursively) and Show Details.  The recursive part is important to me as I have used diff tools which made you navigate into a folder to see the differences in that folder then you had to navigate out – pain!

Here is a compare with the files and folders exactly the same.  Again, about what you would expect.  Compare is fast and accurate.

Next, I removed some files from the 2nd folder just to see how things compared.  And it found all of the differences I created within the folder structures.

Ok, that’s about it for my diff’ing tonight.  Now I know I did not mention all of the options (there are many!) or any of the other features that may exist.  I leave that to you – just check out the Release Notes and you will see all the new features.

Off the Top

Things I liked

What I think really makes this program work for me.

I liked the clean looks of Guiffy – everything you need is on the toolbar to do most jobs (that’s nice for the mac since the menu is not attached to any mac program – at least standard ones).

I liked the speed of comparison (folder compare seems extremely fast as does all the compares).

I liked the code syntax coloring as well as the themes that you can pick for Guiffy.

I liked the ability to show side to side and top to bottom views of my diffs.

Things I could like

Some things that would be cool (to me) if they were a part of Guiffy – some of the items I might have mentioned already.

I could like it if in the Folder Compare there was a .. or previous folder (up arrow) navigator in the folder view and not on the toolbar.

I could like it if Guiffy maintained my position (sizing, location) automatically.

I could like it if the toolbar buttons could show text (tell me if that’s there, I just couldn’t find it).

I could like it better if there was coloration for files and folders (show read-only, system files/folders, etc) – if coloration is there I could not find it – is it?.

I could like it if the option to compare .Rar and .7z files was available in addition to all of the other compression types which are available.

Recommendation

Hmmm.. As I said in the Preamble,  I own Guiffy (v8.4), really like it and I don’t hesitate to recommend it.  In fact, if you are going to buy a diff tool then, for the price, Guiffy is a good option.  I also want to say that Guiffy has some of the best service I have worked with and I can vouch for the fact that they do care about their product and want to see it be the best it can be so don’t hesitate to drop them a line if you have a question or issue:  they will get back to you.

Guiffy is a professional Diff/Merge tool and does a great job of providing professional grade features – check it out!

Tab

guiGoog has done something which I would like to see Google itself do. Provide advanced search options to filter down queries instead of making them difficult to use for novice users. Only Bing has managed to provide advanced search on the main search results page, but that too is somewhat limited when compared to the huge amount of filtering that guiGoog provides.

You can search by date range which is adjusted by simple sliders, see search suggestions, search based on location ( country, zip code or language ), search popular websites like Facebook, Twitter, Friendfeed and filter down the file types you want to search with one click icons. If the website or file type you want to search for isn’t present in the icons, you can click on the green plus icon, and add your own custom website or file type.

Power users like me wouldn’t find guiGoog useful at all, since we know how to modify our queries with the file type, site, “” and many other keywords which are hidden behind the GUI of guiGoog. But for novices this can be a helpful website to find just what they’re looking for without having to Google on how to Google.

Windows/Linux それぞれの環境で開発され、改行コードがまちまちな場合に便利。

$ diff --strip-trailing-cr file1 file2

svn diff では次のようにする

$ svn diff -x --ignore-eol-style

Working on legacy codebases isn’t a dream job. If your legacy codebase is a weird mix of scripting, media files and classes, chances are you’re a Flasher.

As far as I know, there is no end to end solution for diffing flas. The best tool we’ve got at the moment is a jsfl script at Software Secret weapons:

>> flash DOM to XML

The utility extracts ActionScript (AS) code from an *.fla file and outputs to (not always valid) XML. For all its shortages, this is unambiguously a first step towards a  workable solution for diffing Flash files.

I plan on extending the utility to extract asset attributes as well as AS code. once this is done, rather than relying on an existing diff tool, it could be a good idea to develop a hierarchical diff view. Besides that would give me the ideal excuse to write an XML diff tool and integrate with ee-xml, our budding XML editor

The last step is to integrate with a version control system. SVN via TortoiseSVN will be my pick. The hardest part was digging references from the docs:

>> Tortoise SVN diff tool setup (from the turtle’s mouth)

It’s been suggested that whoever brings a qualified diff tool  to the flash community will attain fame and glory.

I feel lazy.

I have been merging packages from debian unstable to ubuntu karmic lately and every so often I need to look at a merge conflict.

Sometimes it’s not so obvious why a conflict occurred at all. Here’s an example conflict from the libsepol package:

  1 <<<<<<< libsepol-2.0.32-1ubuntu1 (ubuntu)
  3     /* Get the scope info for this boolean to see if this is the declaration,
  4      * if so set the state */
  5     scope = hashtab_search(state->cur->policy->p_bools_scope.table, id);
  6     if (!scope)
  7         return SEPOL_ERR;
  8     if (scope->scope == SCOPE_DECL)
  9         base_bool->state = booldatum->state;
 10 
 11 =======
 13     /* Get the scope info for this boolean to see if this is the declaration,
 14      * if so set the state */
 15     scope = hashtab_search(state->cur->policy->p_bools_scope.table, id);
 16     if (!scope)
 17         return SEPOL_ERR;
 18     if (scope->scope == SCOPE_DECL)
 19         base_bool->state = booldatum->state;
 20 
 21 >>>>>>> libsepol-2.0.36-1 (debian)

In order to avoid staring at the screen until my eyes start to bleed I came up with the following bash function:

  1 function dsec() {
  2     xclip -selection clipboard -o > /tmp/patch-seg-to-diff.txt
  3     rm -f /tmp/ubuntu-snippet.txt /tmp/debian-snippet.txt
  4     ed /tmp/patch-seg-to-diff.txt > /dev/null 2>&1 <<-EOUBUNTU
  5         1 d
  6         /^===/,$ d
  7         wq /tmp/ubuntu-snippet.txt
  8 EOUBUNTU
  9     ed /tmp/patch-seg-to-diff.txt > /dev/null 2>&1 <<-EODEBIAN
 10         1,/^===/d
 11         $ d
 12         wq /tmp/debian-snippet.txt
 13 EODEBIAN
 14     echo 'diff -Nru /tmp/ubuntu-snippet.txt /tmp/debian-snippet.txt | colordiff | less'
 15     diff -Nru /tmp/ubuntu-snippet.txt /tmp/debian-snippet.txt | colordiff | less
 16 }

I can now use my favourite editor to copy the conflicting code to the clipboard. When invoked on the command line the dsec function reads the clipboard content and chops it apart (using the ed utility) into a debian and an ubuntu snippet respectively. Subsequently it invokes the diff utility on the two snippets showing me how they differ.

 1 --- /tmp/ubuntu-snippet.txt 2009-06-26 12:42:04.000000000 +0200
 2 +++ /tmp/debian-snippet.txt 2009-06-26 12:42:04.000000000 +0200
 3 @@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 4     /* Get the scope info for this boolean to see if this is the declaration,
 5 -    * if so set the state */
 6 +    * if so set the state */
 7     scope = hashtab_search(state->cur->policy->p_bools_scope.table, id);
 8     if (!scope)
 9         return SEPOL_ERR;

Hmm .. this looks like a white space issue. Since the dsec function printed the actual diff command to the terminal, I can copy and paste that to the command line and add the -b parameter so that the diff utility ignores changes in the amount of white space and ..

 1 $ diff -Nrub /tmp/ubuntu-snippet.txt /tmp/debian-snippet.txt
 2 $ echo $?
 3 0

.. voila! the diff output this time around is empty.

In order for this to work the utilities used must be installed, so e.g. on a ubuntu system run:

sudo apt-get install xclip colordiff

And .. don't forget to have fun

1. Using TortoiseSVN, right-click on your working folder and select “Show Log” from the TortoiseSVN menu.
2. Click the revision that was last published, e.g. rev 123. This is your “base” revision.
3. Ctrl+Click the HEAD or latest revision or the revision you want to release, e.g. rev 200 — so that both revisions are highlighted.
4. Right-click on either of the highlighted revisions and select “Compare revisions.” This will open a dialog window that lists all new/modified files.
5. Select all files from this list (Ctrl+a) then right-click on the highlighted files and select “Export selection to…”