fsdiff

README

fsdiff

fsdiff is a simple tool that helps finding out what changes occurred in a filesystem tree.

Using fsdiff involves two steps: first take a snapshot of the target filesystem before modifications happen, then another one after. Then, the diff step compares the two snapshots and reports the changes found.

Here is an example illustrating how to use this tool. We start with an existing file tree:

$ tree test/
test
├── a
│   ├── b
│   └── c
│       └── d
└── z

2 directories, 3 files

We take a snapshot of the current state, which will be our reference point in case of later modification:

$ fsdiff snapshot -o before.snap test/

Now, let's shake things up:

$ mkdir test/.x
$ echo y > test/.x/y
$ rm -rf test/a/c/
$ echo z > test/a/b

We now take a second snapshot representing the current state:

$ fsdiff snapshot -o after.snap test/

To know what happened during the two snapshots, we run a diff operation:

$ fsdiff diff before.snap after.snap
+ .x
+ .x/y
~ a
  size:128 mtime:2019-05-19 20:30:22.638232884 +0200 CEST uid:501 gid:20 mode:drwxr-xr-x DIR
  size:96 mtime:2019-05-19 20:33:26.626202277 +0200 CEST uid:501 gid:20 mode:drwxr-xr-x DIR
~ a/b
  size:2 mtime:2019-05-19 20:30:22.528923845 +0200 CEST uid:501 gid:20 mode:-rw-r--r-- checksum:89e6c98d92887913cadf06b2adb97f26cde4849b
  size:2 mtime:2019-05-19 20:33:38.893340925 +0200 CEST uid:501 gid:20 mode:-rw-r--r-- checksum:3a710d2a84f856bc4e1c0bbb93ca517893c48691
- a/c
- a/c/d

2 new, 2 changed, 2 deleted

Installation

Pre-compiled binaries

Pre-compiled binaries are available for stable releases.

Using go get

go get github.com/falzm/fsdiff

From source (requires a Go compiler >= 1.9)

At the top of the sources directory, just type make. If everything went well, you should end up with binary named fsdiff in your current directory.

Usage

Usage documentation is available by running the fsdiff help command.

Note: when performing a diff operation, the command will exit with a return code 2 if changes have been detected between two snapshots, and 0 if no changes. Any other error returns 1.