[CentOS] yum/dnf diff

Fri Jun 5 13:10:26 UTC 2020
Johnny Hughes <johnny at centos.org>

On 6/1/20 7:25 PM, Kenneth Porter wrote:
> I'm used to using "git diff" and "svn diff" to view changes in my
> development system. Is there a similar thing that works with changes
> between a repository package and the installed RPM? Ie. something that
> shows the changes in /etc hinted at by "rpm -V". I'm already using
> etckeeper+git but that would combine changes from updates with my own
> modifications.
> 
> The only thing I've found so far is a rather manual procedure:
> 
> <https://serverfault.com/questions/378439/getting-diffs-for-file-changes-detected-by-rpm-v>

You COULD diff the directories containing exploded source code .. but I
don't think it will help you.

These are two totally separate programs and projects.  It would be like
trying to diff GNOME and KDE because they serve the same function.  You
could technically do it, but the result would have very little meaning
as all the file names inside the code are different.  The diff would be
a copy of each file from both projects.

On an EL8 system, yum is a symlink to dnf.  So there is NO difference
between yum and dnf on EL8 (they are the exact same file .. /usr/bin/dnf).

The files for yum and dnf in /usr/bin/ are python scripts .. but they
also import many python libraries .. so they are not totally contained
in a single file.