DOKK / manpages / debian 12 / xdelta3 / xdelta3.1.en
XDELTA3(1) General Commands Manual XDELTA3(1)

xdelta3 - VCDIFF (RFC 3284) binary diff tool

xdelta3 [command] [options] [input [output]]

xdelta3 is a binary diff tool that uses the VCDIFF (RFC 3284) format and compression.

prints xdelta3 configuration
decompress the input, also set by -d
compress the input, also set by -e (default)
run the builtin tests
print information about the entire delta
print information about the first window
print information about all windows
encode with new application/secondary settings

standard options:

-0 .. -9
compression level
use stdout
decompress
compress
force overwrite
show help
be quiet
be verbose (max 2)
show version

bytes source window size
bytes input window size
size compression duplicates window
size instruction buffer size (0 = unlimited)

source source file to copy from (if any)
enable/disable secondary compression
disable small string-matching compression
disable external decompression (encode/decode)
disable external recompression (decode)
disable checksum (encode/decode)
soft config (encode, undocumented)
disable/provide application header (encode)
disable output (check/compute only)
use alternate code table (test)

The XDELTA environment variable may contain extra args:

XDELTA="-s source-x.y.tar.gz" \
tar --use-compress-program=xdelta3 -cf \
target-x.z.tar.gz.vcdiff target-x.y/

Compress the differences between SOURCE and TARGET, yielding OUT, using "djw" secondary compression:

xdelta3 -S djw -s SOURCE TARGET OUT

Do the same, using standard input and output:

xdelta3 -S djw -s SOURCE < TARGET > OUT

To decompress OUT, using SOURCE, yielding TARGET:

xdelta3 -d -s SOURCE OUT TARGET

xdelta3 was written by Josh MacDonald <josh.macdonald@gmail.com>.

This manual page was written by Leo 'costela' Antunes <costela@debian.org> for the Debian project (but may be used by others).

August 2009 Xdelta3