rcsvimdiff or vimrcsdiff

29 Nov 2006 RCS is nice to keep a history of how files changes over time. "rcsdiff" then is a tool that can generate a diff-file between 2 versions of the same file.

However, the diff is shown in standard "diff" output format. I prefer the "vimdiff" program (which comes with vim in Debian).

The vimdiff command takes 2 files and shows them side by side in vim, using syntax coloring and such. But vimdiff can't work with RCS...

So I created this script which I'll call rcsvimdiff. It combines both functionalities in one.

#!/bin/bash 

ver1=$1
ver2=$2
file=$3


if [ "x$file" = "x" ];
then
        echo "Usage: rcsvimdiff -rREV1 -rREV2 filename"
        exit 0
fi

if [ ! -f $file ];
then
       echo "File $file doesn't exist."
       exit 1
fi

if [ ! -f $file,v -a ! -f `dirname $file`/RCS/`basename $file`,v ];
then
       echo "File $file has no RCS history"
       exit 1
fi

basefile=`basename $file`

TMPDIR=/tmp/rcsvimdiff.$RANDOM$RANDOM$RANDOM

for v in $ver1 $ver2;
do
    mkdir -p $TMPDIR$v || exit 1

    cp -f $file $TMPDIR$v/
    cp -f `dirname $file`/RCS/`basename $file`,v $TMPDIR$v/
    cp -f $file,v $TMPDIR$v/

    co -f $v $TMPDIR$v/$basefile
done

vimdiff $TMPDIR$ver1/$basefile $TMPDIR$ver2/$basefile

for v in $ver1 $ver2;
do
    rm -rf $TMPDIR$v
done

Usage: rcsvimdiff <-rREV1> <-rREV2>

For example: rcsvimdiff -r1.1 -r1.3 /etc/motd