Debian Bug report logs - #1017908
dpkg: Setting to change the diff tool to view conffile difference

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Message #5 received at submit@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Axel Beckert <abe@debian.org>

To: Debian Bug Tracking System <submit@bugs.debian.org>

Subject: dpkg: Setting to change the diff tool to view conffile difference

Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2022 11:41:19 +0200

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Package: dpkg
Version: 1.21.9
Severity: wishlist

Dear Guillem,

it would be nice if there would be a setting (or environment variable or
interactive option) to use a different tool than "diff" to view conffile
differences.

This would add the possibility to e.g. use colorized diffs as provided
by tools like colordiff, "dwdiff -c" or icdiff which allows to review
changes more easily (like the adduser.conf changes which came in today).

P.S.: I've looked and searched through the man pages of dpkg(1) and
dpkg.cfg(5) but found no such setting, hence the wishlist bug report.

-- Package-specific info:

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-- System Information:
Debian Release: bookworm/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (990, 'unstable'), (600, 'testing'), (500, 'unstable-debug'), (500, 'buildd-unstable'), (110, 'experimental'), (1, 'experimental-debug'), (1, 'buildd-experimental')
merged-usr: no
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 5.18.0-4-amd64 (SMP w/8 CPU threads; PREEMPT)
Locale: LANG=C.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=C.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE not set
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: sysvinit (via /sbin/init)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled

Versions of packages dpkg depends on:
ii  libbz2-1.0   1.0.8-5
ii  libc6        2.34-4
ii  liblzma5     5.2.5-2.1
ii  libselinux1  3.4-1+b1
ii  tar          1.34+dfsg-1
ii  zlib1g       1:1.2.11.dfsg-4.1

dpkg recommends no packages.

Versions of packages dpkg suggests:
ii  apt            2.5.2
ii  debsig-verify  0.25+b2

-- no debconf information

Message #10 received at 1017908@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Guillem Jover <guillem@debian.org>

To: Axel Beckert <abe@debian.org>, 1017908@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: Bug#1017908: dpkg: Setting to change the diff tool to view conffile difference

Date: Wed, 14 Sep 2022 05:06:05 +0200

Control: forcemerge 313204 -1

On Mon, 2022-08-22 at 11:41:19 +0200, Axel Beckert wrote:
> Package: dpkg
> Version: 1.21.9
> Severity: wishlist

> it would be nice if there would be a setting (or environment variable or
> interactive option) to use a different tool than "diff" to view conffile
> differences.
> 
> This would add the possibility to e.g. use colorized diffs as provided
> by tools like colordiff, "dwdiff -c" or icdiff which allows to review
> changes more easily (like the adduser.conf changes which came in today).
> 
> P.S.: I've looked and searched through the man pages of dpkg(1) and
> dpkg.cfg(5) but found no such setting, hence the wishlist bug report.

Yeah, I've been meaning to add this, I just need to define a syntax so
that the arguments can be specified independently of the tool.

Merging with the older requests.

Thanks,
Guillem

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