Command Line Folder Comparison that outputs difference

Question

I'm looking for a Windows command line utility that outputs the differences of two folders into another folder.

An example, I have folder A which has already been deployed, I want to deploy folder B, which is a updated version of folder A. So I need a list of the changes I need to make in order to make Folder A match folder B.

Answer 1

Beyond Compare has some command line abilities although I can't find much on their website about them.

They are fully documented in the help file and you can download a fully functional trial version.

Answer 2

rsync will sync up two folders. there are implementations of it on windows, e.g. as part of cygwin

Answer 3

I can recommend unison for syncing directories (local or remote). There is a nice graphical GTK client, but the command line version is always available.

Unison is a file-synchronization tool for Unix and Windows. It allows two replicas of a collection of files and directories to be stored on different hosts (or different disks on the same host), modified separately, and then brought up to date by propagating the changes in each replica to the other.

Answer 4

I find the diff.exe that comes with Vim to be useful.

Answer 5

Something like WinMerge will let you see the differences between one folder and another, and will let you apply changes to one or the other.