[TUHS] Re: Be there a "remote diff" utility?

["Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@mit.edu>]

On Thu, May 16, 2024 at 04:34:54PM +1000, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> Every so often I want to compare files on remote machines, but all I can 
> do is to fetch them first (usually into /tmp); I'd like to do something 
> like:
> 
>     rdiff host1:file1 host2:file2
> 
> Breathes there such a beast?  I see that Penguin/OS has already taken 
> "rdiff" which doesn't seem to do what I want.

rdiff is something which someone on the internet had created, as part
of the librsync package[1].  Thia isn't considered part of the core
package (for example, Debian consideres it as an "optional" package)
but rather something which various distributions have packaged for the
convenience for their users.

[1] https://librsync.github.io/

So if this is considered part of Penguin/OS, would we also consider
"nethack" or X11 part of BSD 4.3, since it was available and often
would be commonly installed on BSD 4.3 systems?  Or are all packages
which are in FreeBSD's ports "part of FreeBSD"?  Or all packages in
MacPorts part of MacOS?

In any case, the way I'd suggest that you do this that works as an
extention to the Unix philosohy of "Everything looks like a file" is
to use FUSE:

sshfs host1:/ ~/mnt/host1
sshfs host2:/ ~/mnt/host2
diff ~/mnt/host1/file1 ~/mnt/host2/file2

Cheers,

					- Ted