Comparing 2 folders

Problem

You want to compare the content of 2 folders recursively.

Solution

You can use diff with -rq option

    diff -rq <folder1> <folder2>

If you want more detailed report of the differences, you can use a Nodejs tool called dir-compare. First, install nodejs, then install dir-compare by this command npm install dir-compare -g. Then you can use it like this:

    # Compare files by content
    dircompare -ca <folder1> <folder2>

    # Ignore some folders
    dircompare -d <folder1> <folder2> -x <folder-to-ignore>

There are other options such as to exclude directories or files by name. You can discover more by using dircompare -h

If you only want to compare folders by filename, not file content, you can use diff

    diff <(ls -1a ./dir1) <(ls -1a ./dir2)