Is there a decent tool for comparing/diffing two Java packages?

Question

I'm looking for a tool that will give me a high level view of which files are different between two fairly large Java packages. If I could then drill down into individual files then that would be good. I don't want to go file by file if possible.. any ideas?

thanks

Answer 1

Beyond compare (and other diff tools) can do directory compares too ...

Answer 2

I use Kompare on Linux. Just a diff GUI front end, that can diff directories recursively. I believe there are many others (I'm sure I've seen a list somewhere).

Answer 3

Eclipse works well. Just select the two different packages (hold the Ctrl key, click on a package, click again on the other package), right click on one of the selected packages, go to the 'Compare With...' submenu, select 'Compare With Each Other'.

Answer 4

I have used Araxis Merge to do this too. It is also helpful for doing code merges. It is not free (about 80 bucks I think) but well worth it.

Answer 5

If you're more interested in API differences than content differences, check out JDiff.

For example the Google Guava project uses it to show changes between releases. Here is the r06 release diff: http://guava-libraries.googlecode.com/svn/tags/release06/javadoc/jdiff/changes.html

Answer 6

I always use eclipses team synchronize (for included cvs; this requires one revision checked in and another one disk) works same way with subclipse plugin for subversion.

If you are on windows and don't have the checked in a version control system you could use winmerge

Answer 7

Last I checked kdiff3 worked both on *nix and windows.

Answer 8

WinMerge is an excellent Windows standalone diff tool and I use it for almost all of my source files. It can navigate through folder structures (in your case, your Java packages).

If you do use version control, it integrates very well with TortoiseSVN (and perhaps others in the Tortoise family).