Subject: bug#28851: [bug-diffutils] - Directories compare doesn't show all differences

From: Jim Meyering <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 15 Oct 2017 09:39:34 -0700

On Wed, Oct 11, 2017 at 8:07 AM, wasser mai <[email-masked]> wrote:
> Description of problem:
> Directories compare with --brief doesn't show all differencies
>
> Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
> 3.6
>
> How reproducible:
> always
>
> Steps to Reproduce:
> 1. create 2 directories dir1 and dir2
> 2. in dir1 create README file
> 3. in dir2 create README directory
> 4. in dir2/README directory create some files - readme1.txt readme2.txt
> 5. do diff -r --brief dir1/ dir2/
>
> Actual results:
> file dir1/README is a regular file while file dir2/README is a directory
>
> Information about files in dir2/README in compare to dir1 is not
> present - also difference
>
> Expected results:
> Show all difference as expected

Thank you for the report, but what you are seeing is the intended
behavior. What if diff (with or without --brief) were to print even
just the names of all files under your README directory, recursively?

Consider what this invocation of diff should print:

  touch /tmp/usr && diff -r /tmp/usr /

Currently, it prints only this:

  File /tmp/usr is a regular empty file while file /usr is a directory

while with your suggestion, it would print something for each of the
many files under /usr.
[I've Cc'd the bug-diffutils mailing list, per instructions at the
bottom of "diff --help" output]