The power off shell

Linux shell is a powerful tool for developers. Basic commands such as find, grep, diff can be combined to make our lives easier. Suppose that we are working on a project that uses CVS as source code control system, and there are plenty of versions of the same project on CVS. How can you find out the changed java files between version V1 and version V2? The answer is simple: use cvs and diff commands.

First, checkout the two versions of the project in to two different directories. Create a directory named v1. Checkout a version of the source into directory v1.

mkdir v1
cd v1
cvs -d :pserver:ilkinba@192.168.43.12:/usr/local/cvsroot/ina co -rICU_01_03_01 common/InoxCommonUtil


Create a directory named v2. Checkout a version of the source into directory v2.

mkdir v2
cd v2
cvs -d :pserver:ilkinba@192.168.43.12:/usr/local/cvsroot/ina co -rICU_01_03_02 common/InoxCommonUtil

Now it is time to use diff command.

diff -r -q v1/ v2/

This command outputs all the files that differ in directory v1 and v2.
"r" option is used to tell diff command to work recursively.
"q" option is used to tell diff command to work briefly. diff will only write the names of the different files.
Use grep to filter java source files.

diff -r -q v1/ v2/ | grep .java

After detecting the changed java source files you can use diff to see what has been changed in the java source files.

$ diff -r -q v1 v2 |grep .java
Files v1/common/InoxCommonUtil/code/src/com/oksijen/inox/common/util/edr/EDRGenerator.java and v2/common/InoxCommonUtil/code/src/com/oksijen/inox/common/util/edr/EDRGenerator.java differ

$ diff -y --suppress-common-lines v1/common/InoxCommonUtil/code/src/com/oksijen/inox/common/util/edr/EDRGenerator.java v2/common/InoxCommonUtil/code/src/com/oksijen/inox/common/util/edr/EDRGenerator.java

The result of the above command will be something like:

&& st[i].indexOf(label) >= 0) | && st[i].indexOf(fileName) >=

"y" option tells diff to output results in two columns(side by side)
"--suppress-common-lines" option is used to display only changed lines. Common lines will not be displayed.
Thats all.