combinediff — create a cumulative unified patch from two incremental patches
combinediff [[-p n] | [--strip-match=n]] [[-U n] | [--unified=n]] [[-d PAT] | [--drop-context=PAT]] [[-q] | [--quiet]] [[-z] | [--decompress]] [[-b] | [--ignore-space-change]] [[-B] | [--ignore-blank-lines]] [[-i] | [--ignore-case]] [[-w] | [--ignore-all-space]] [[--interpolate] | [--combine]] diff1 diff2
combinediff {[--help] | [--version]}
combinediff creates a unified diff that expresses the sum of two diffs. The diff files must be listed in the order that they are to be applied. For best results, the diffs must have at least three lines of context.
Since combinediff doesn't have the advantage of being able to look at the files that are to be modified, it has stricter requirements on the input format than patch(1) does. The output of GNU diff will be okay, even with extensions, but if you intend to use a hand-edited patch it might be wise to clean up the offsets and counts using recountdiff(1) first.
Note, however, that the two patches must be in strict incremental order. In other words, the second patch must be relative to the state of the original set of files after the first patch was applied.
The diffs may be in context format. The output, however, will be in unified format.
-p n,
--strip-match=nWhen comparing filenames, ignore the first
n pathname components from
both patches. (This is similar to the
-p option to GNU patch(1).)
-q, --quietQuieter output. Don't emit rationale lines at the beginning of each patch.
-U n,
--unified=nAttempt to display n
lines of context (requires at least
n lines of context in both
input files). (This is similar to the
-U option to GNU
diff(1).)
-d pattern,
--drop-context=PATTERNDon't display any context on files that match the
shell wildcard pattern.
This option can be given multiple times.
Note that the interpretation of the shell wildcard
pattern does not count slash characters or periods as
special (in other words, no flags are given to
fnmatch). This is so that
“*/basename”-type patterns can be given
without limiting the number of pathname
components.
-i, --ignore-caseConsider upper- and lower-case to be the same.
-w,
--ignore-all-spaceIgnore whitespace changes in patches.
-b,
--ignore-space-changeIgnore changes in the amount of whitespace.
-B,
--ignore-blank-linesIgnore changes whose lines are all blank.
-z,
--decompressDecompress files with extensions .gz and .bz2.
--interpolateRun as “interdiff”. See interdiff(1) for more information about how the behaviour is altered in this mode.
--combineRun as “combinediff”. This is the default.
--helpDisplay a short usage message.
--versionDisplay the version number of combinediff.