borg diff¶

borg [common options] diff [options] ARCHIVE1 ARCHIVE2 [PATH...]

positional arguments
	`ARCHIVE1`	ARCHIVE1 name
	`ARCHIVE2`	ARCHIVE2 name
	`PATH`	paths of items inside the archives to compare; patterns are supported
optional arguments
	`--numeric-ids`	only consider numeric user and group identifiers
	`--same-chunker-params`	Override check of chunker parameters.
	`--sort`	Sort the output lines by file path.
	`--format FORMAT`	specify format for differences between archives (default: “{change} {path}{NL}”)
	`--json-lines`	Format output as JSON Lines.
	`--content-only`	Only compare differences in content (exclude metadata differences)
Common options
Include/Exclude options
	`-e PATTERN`, `--exclude PATTERN`	exclude paths matching PATTERN
	`--exclude-from EXCLUDEFILE`	read exclude patterns from EXCLUDEFILE, one per line
	`--pattern PATTERN`	include/exclude paths matching PATTERN
	`--patterns-from PATTERNFILE`	read include/exclude patterns from PATTERNFILE, one per line

Description¶

This command finds differences (file contents, metadata) between ARCHIVE1 and ARCHIVE2.

For more help on include/exclude patterns, see the borg help patterns command output.

The FORMAT specifier syntax¶

The --format option uses python’s format string syntax.

Examples:

$ borg diff --format '{content:30} {path}{NL}' ArchiveFoo ArchiveBar
modified:  +4.1 kB  -1.0 kB    file-diff
...

# {VAR:<NUMBER} - pad to NUMBER columns left-aligned.
# {VAR:>NUMBER} - pad to NUMBER columns right-aligned.
$ borg diff --format '{content:>30} {path}{NL}' ArchiveFoo ArchiveBar
   modified:  +4.1 kB  -1.0 kB file-diff
...

The following keys are always available:

NEWLINE: OS dependent line separator
NL: alias of NEWLINE
NUL: NUL character for creating print0 / xargs -0 like output
SPACE: space character
TAB: tab character
CR: carriage return character
LF: line feed character

Keys available only when showing differences between archives:

path: archived file path
change: all available changes
content: file content change
mode: file mode change
type: file type change
owner: file owner (user/group) change
group: file group change
user: file user change
link: file link change
directory: file directory change
blkdev: file block device change
chrdev: file character device change
fifo: file fifo change
mtime: file modification time change
ctime: file change time change
isomtime: file modification time change (ISO 8601)
isoctime: file creation time change (ISO 8601)

Examples¶

$ borg diff archive1 archive2
    +17 B      -5 B [-rw-r--r-- -> -rwxr-xr-x] file1
   +135 B    -252 B file2
added           0 B file4
removed         0 B file3

$ borg diff archive1 archive2
{"path": "file1", "changes": [{"type": "modified", "added": 17, "removed": 5}, {"type": "mode", "old_mode": "-rw-r--r--", "new_mode": "-rwxr-xr-x"}]}
{"path": "file2", "changes": [{"type": "modified", "added": 135, "removed": 252}]}
{"path": "file4", "changes": [{"type": "added", "size": 0}]}
{"path": "file3", "changes": [{"type": "removed", "size": 0}]}