Diff .tar.gz files in vscode

01-diff-targz-in.vscode.md

Diff .tar.gz files in vscode (and other git clients)

Tested on Windows, but should also work on Linux and Max

1. Store the targzDiff.sh from below somewhere on your computer
2. Add to your ~/.gitconfig with path to local stored targzDiff.sh

[diff "targz"]
  textconv = sh -c 'cat $0 | ~/some/where/targzDiff.sh'

(~ is on Windows C:\Users\<Username>\)

3. Add the following to either your project's .gitattributes or global ~/.gitattributes (when configured [core] attributesfile = ~/.gitattributes)

**/*.tar.gz binary diff=targz

4. Now open vscode or any other git diff tool and click on a commit -> it will show diff of the textfiles inside the .tar.gz
5. Inside the targzDiff.sh currently m.p4, .jpg and .png are excluded -> add more binaries to the if statement if you need to exclude more

targzDiff.sh

#!/bin/bash

set -euo pipefail

tarGzFilePath="/dev/stdin"
timestamp=$(date -u +"%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")
extractPath="/tmp/${timestamp}-${RANDOM}-targzDiff/"
mkdir -p "$extractPath"

tar -xzf "$tarGzFilePath" -C "$extractPath"

find "$extractPath" -type f | while read -r file; do
  if [[ "$file" != *.mp4 && "$file" != *.jpg && "$file" != *.png ]]; then
    echo "Content of $(basename "$file"):"
    cat "$file"
    echo -e "\n\n"
  else
    echo "binary $(basename "$file"), hashcode:"
    sha256sum "$file" | awk '{print $1}'
  fi
done

rm -rf $extractPath