How do I compare two source trees in Linux? [closed]

Question

I have two directories containing source files to a project I've inherited with little by way of documentation. How do I compare both directories to make see what the differences are?

Answer 1

Try this:

diff -Naur dir1/ dir2/ 

• The -u option makes the output a little easier to read.
• The -r option recurses through all subdirectories
• The -N and -a options are really only necessary if you wanted to create a patch file.