veyepar: Can your diff(1) do this?! Improving software review & QA with diffoscope

Author(s):	Chris Lamb
Location	Guthrie Theatre CB06.03.28
Date	jan Wed 24	Days Raw Files
Start	15:50	First Raw Start	15:40
Duration	0:45:0	Offset	0:09:41
End	16:35	Last Raw End	16:40
Chapters	00:00 0:21:30
Total cuts_time	41 min.

http://lca2018.linux.org.au/schedule/presentation/102/
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In an age increasingly concerned with reducing bugs as well as complying with free software licenses, it is vitally important to thoroughly review audit any changes to the software that powers our technology and infrastructure.

However, existing tools to perform comparisons between two versions of a software package are overly-blunt instruments, either providing too much output or none at all. Binaries such as firmware images or precompiled executables are especially problematic: a single change in the source is presented as a meaningless stream of changes, offering no insight into potentially critical bugs. And these are often precisely the files we care most about…!

Diffoscope is different. Developed as part of the Reproducible Builds effort, it gets to the bottom of what makes files truly different. It recursively unpacks archives of all kinds and transforms various formats into human-readable forms for display. It can compare two tarballs, ISO images, PDFs, Microsoft Word documents, etc. just as easily.

This talk explains the varied and practical usages of diffoscope and how this flexible "diff on steroids" is a long-overdue & fun tool for anyone writing or releasing software today.

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