diff_dirs – Recursive Directory Comparison

THE IDEA

diff_dirs – Recursive Directory Comparison

Type: Software Status: Production Tech Stack: Python 3.8+, PyYAML, difflib, hashlib, HTML/CSS/JavaScript (generated report) Problem Statement Not every project state lives in a version control system: ZIP deliveries, exported folders or customer versions often have to be compared without Git. Developers then need a quick overview of which files are new, deleted or modified and what exactly changed inside them — for example to check what a contractor actually delivered, or to hand third parties a traceable change log. Description diff_dirs is a lean Python command-line tool that recursively compares two versions of a project folder and shows new, deleted, modified and binary-modified files together with a line-accurate unified diff. It is intended for situations without Git, such as ZIP deliveries or exported customer versions. Files present in both versions are first compared by MD5 hash and only diffed line by line if they differ; binary files are detected by extension and a null-byte heuristic and reported without a content diff. Paths, output and filters (ignored directories, glob patterns, an extension whitelist) are controlled by a single YAML file, which can be generated as a commented template with --init. The output is a coloured terminal report and, optionally, a standalone, searchable HTML report with expandable diffs. The only external dependency is PyYAML. The tool is finished, publicly available and unchanged since February 2026, but has no automated tests. Use Case Shows at a glance what has changed between two versions of a project, even when no version control such as Git is involved. Link: https://github.com/rawk7000/diff_dirs (public repo)