Bug#879010: diffoscope: Add an option to exclude file lists differences

[Mike Hommey]

Package: diffoscope
Version: 87
Severity: wishlist

Dear Maintainer,

It's usually more convenient to give tarballs than to extract them and
pass directories to diffoscope. But then the difference between the two
containers are displayed, while one might not care about those
differences. It might actually be true with directories too, where
differences about file stats might be shown that are otherwise unwanted.

I tried --exclude "file list" as suggested on irc, but that didn't work.

An option that allows to ignore at least the first-level of file lists
would be useful.

Mike


-- System Information:
Debian Release: buster/sid
  APT prefers unstable-debug
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable-debug'), (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing'), (1, 'experimental-debug'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 4.13.0-1-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=ja_JP.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=ja_JP.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

Versions of packages diffoscope depends on:
ii  python3                3.6.3-1
ii  python3-distro         1.0.1-2
ii  python3-libarchive-c   2.1-3.1
ii  python3-magic          1:5.32-1
ii  python3-pkg-resources  36.2.7-2

Versions of packages diffoscope recommends:
ii  acl                       2.2.52-3+b1
pn  apktool                   <none>
pn  binutils-multiarch        <none>
ii  bzip2                     1.0.6-8.1
pn  caca-utils                <none>
ii  colord                    1.3.3-2
pn  device-tree-compiler      <none>
pn  docx2txt                  <none>
pn  enjarify                  <none>
pn  fontforge-extras          <none>
pn  fp-utils                  <none>
pn  genisoimage               <none>
ii  gettext                   0.19.8.1-4
pn  ghc                       <none>
ii  ghostscript               9.22~dfsg-1
pn  giflib-tools              <none>
ii  gnupg                     2.2.1-2
pn  imagemagick               <none>
pn  jsbeautifier              <none>
pn  libarchive-tools          <none>
pn  llvm                      <none>
pn  mono-utils                <none>
pn  odt2txt                   <none>
pn  oggvideotools             <none>
ii  openjdk-7-jdk [java-sdk]  7u121-2.6.8-1
ii  openjdk-8-jdk [java-sdk]  8u144-b01-2
ii  openssh-client            1:7.6p1-2
pn  pdftk                     <none>
pn  pgpdump                   <none>
pn  poppler-utils             <none>
pn  python3-argcomplete       <none>
ii  python3-binwalk           2.1.1-16
ii  python3-debian            0.1.31
ii  python3-defusedxml        0.5.0-1
pn  python3-guestfs           <none>
pn  python3-progressbar       <none>
pn  python3-rpm               <none>
pn  python3-tlsh              <none>
pn  r-base-core               <none>
ii  rpm2cpio                  4.12.0.2+dfsg1-2+b1
pn  sng                       <none>
ii  sqlite3                   3.20.1-1
ii  squashfs-tools            1:4.3-4
ii  tcpdump                   4.9.2-1
ii  unzip                     6.0-21
ii  vim-common                2:8.0.1144-1
ii  xxd                       2:8.0.1144-1+b1
ii  xz-utils                  5.2.2-1.3

Versions of packages diffoscope suggests:
ii  libjs-jquery  3.2.1-1

-- no debconf information