Install Difftastic on Ubuntu 24.04

Difftastic is a command line tool designed to provide a more accurate and insightful diff for code changes. Unlike traditional diff tools that compare files line by line, Difftastic takes into account the syntax and structure of the code. This allows it to produce diffs that are more meaningful and easier to understand, especially for programming languages. This tutorial shows how to install Difftastic on Ubuntu 24.04.

Install Difftastic

Download the latest Difftastic archive from the GitHub releases page:

wget -qO difft.tar.gz https://github.com/Wilfred/difftastic/releases/latest/download/difft-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu.tar.gz

Extract the executable into the /usr/local/bin directory:

sudo tar xf difft.tar.gz -C /usr/local/bin

To find out the Difftastic version, use the command:

difft --version

Remove no longer needed file:

rm -rf difft.tar.gz

Testing Difftastic

Create two files for comparison:

echo "console.log('Hello');" > old.js

echo "console.log('Hello world');" > new.js

To compare files, provide the file names as arguments to the difft command:

difft old.js new.js

Uninstall Difftastic

To uninstall Difftastic, remove the corresponding file:

sudo rm -rf /usr/local/bin/difft