LATEXDIFF-VC(1)

💅 LATEXDIFF-VC — bestie edition

okay so you found latexdiff-vc (that's the LATEXDIFF-VC(1) page, you're in the right place, welcome 🫶) and honestly? it's giving "I make your paper's diff look cute under version control". sit down, hydrate, let's go.

---

✨ NAME ✨

latexdiff-vc — a wrapper script that calls latexdiff for different versions of a file under version management (CVS, RCS or SVN). yes bestie, it's the little delegator that could 💖

---

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

latexdiff-vc [ latexdiff-options ] [ latexdiff-vc-options ]  -r [rev1]
[-r rev2]  file1.tex [ file2.tex ...]

or, if you're doing the two-file thing:

latexdiff-vc [ latexdiff-options ]  [ latexdiff-vc-options ][
--postscript | --pdf ]  old.tex new.tex

---

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

latexdiff-vc is a wrapper script that applies latexdiff to a file, or multiple files under version control (git, subversion (SVN), mercurial (hg), CVS, RCS), and optionally runs the sequence of latex and dvips or pdflatex commands necessary to produce pdf or postscript output of the difference tex file(s). it can also be applied to a pair of files to automatise the generation of difference file in postscript or pdf format. no cap, that's the whole vibe 🎀

---

👑 OPTIONS 👑

• --rcs, --svn, --cvs, --git or --hg — pick your version control system, icon that you are. if no version system is specified, latexdiff-vc will venture a guess (it's lowkey psychic like that 🔮)

latexdiff-cvs, latexdiff-rcs etc are variants of latexdiff-vc which default to the respective versioning system. however, this default can still be overridden using the options above.

note that hg needs to support the --root option (version >= 2.9) 💀

• -r, -r rev or --revision, --revision=rev — choose revision (under RCS, CVS, SVN, GIT or HG). one or two -r options can be specified, and they result in different behaviour, so pay attention bestie:
  • latexdiff-vc -r file.tex ... compares file.tex with the most recently checked-in version checked.
  • latexdiff-vc -r rev1 file.tex ... compares file.tex with revision rev1.
  • latexdiff-vc -r rev1 -r rev2 file.tex ... compares revisions rev1 and rev2 of file.tex.
  • multiple files can be specified for all of the above options. all files must have the extensions .tex, .bbl, or .flt, though. (that's the rule, periodt 🚫)
  • latexdiff-vc old.tex new.tex compares two files.

the name of the difference file is generated automatically and reported to stdout. slay.

• -d or --dir, -d path or --dir=path — rather than appending the string diff and optionally the version numbers given to the output-file, this will prepend a directory name diff to the original filename, creating the directory and sub-directories should they not exist already. this is particularly useful in order to clone a complete directory hierarchy. optionally, a pathname path can be specified, which is prepended instead of diff. 🗂️✨
• --flatten, --flatten=keep-intermediate — if combined with --git, --svn or --hg option or the corresponding modes, check out the revisions to compare in a separate temporary directory, and then pass on option --flatten to latexdiff. the directory in which latexdiff-vc is invoked defines the subtree which will be checked out. note that if additional files are needed which are not included in the flatten procedure (package files, included graphics), they need to be accessible in the current directory. if you use bibtex, it is recommended to include the .bbl file in the version management.

the generic usage of this function is: latexdiff-vc --flatten -r rev1 [-r rev2] master.tex where master.tex is the project file containing the highest level of includes etc.

with --flatten=keep-intermediate, the intermediate revision snapshots are kept in the current directory (default is to store them in a temporary directory and delete them after generating the diff file.) 🙈

• --only-changes — post-process the output such that only pages with changes on them are displayed. this requires the use of subtype ZLABEL in latexdiff, which will be set automatically, but any manually set -s option will be overruled (also requires zref package to be installed). this option also disables internal links (as implemented by hyperref package) and graphics markup. (note that this option must be combined with --ps or --pdf to make sense) — so don't skip that part, it literally will not make sense otherwise 😭
• --force — overwrite existing diff files without asking for confirmation. default behaviour is to ask for confirmation before overwriting an existing difference file. (so if you're the "yolo, just do it" type, this is your option 💅)
• --run — run latex command on diff file after generation of diff file.
• --dvi — run latex and dvixxx commands after generation of diff file.
• -c configfile =item --config var1=val1,var2=val2,... or -c var1=val1,.. — set configuration variables for latexdiff and latexdiff-vc. the option can be repeated to set different variables (as an alternative to the comma-separated list). available variables for latexdiff-vc:
  • "LATEXDIFF" — latexdiff command (e.g. latexdiff-fast, latexdiff-so). this command should support the option --interaction=batchmode
  • "LATEX" — latex command (e.g. pdflatex, lualatex)
  • "DVI2" — command for conversion of dvi file (e.g. dvips, dvipdf)
  • "BIBTEX" — command replacing bibtex

all other config variables are passed to latexdiff. explicitly set configuration changes always override implicit changes by the following shortcut options --fast, --so, --ps and --pdf. ⚡

• --fast or --so — use latexdiff-fast or latexdiff-so, respectively (instead of latexdiff).
• --ps or --postscript — generate postscript output from difference file. this will run the sequence latex; latex; dvips on the difference file (do not use this option in the rare cases, where three latex commands are required if you care about correct referencing). if the difference file contains a \bibliography tag, run the sequence latex; bibtex; latex; latex; dvips. 🔥
• --pdf — generate pdf output from difference file using pdflatex. this will run the sequence pdflatex; pdflatex on the difference file, or pdflatex; bibtex; pdflatex; pdflatex for files requiring bibtex. note that this is not just a shortcut for setting configuration variable but also triggers some special behaviour. (main character energy fr 🌈)
• --show-config — show values of configuration variables.
• --help or -h — show help text.
• --version — show version number.

all other options are passed on to latexdiff. 💫

---

🌟 SEE ALSO 🌟

latexdiff — go read that one too, bestie, they're a package deal 🫶

---

🌈 PORTABILITY 🌈

latexdiff-vc uses external commands and is therefore dependent on the system architecture; it has been tested mainly on Unix-like systems. it also requires a version control system and latex to be installed on the system to make use of all features. modules from Perl 5.8 or higher are required. (yes, 5.8. we don't make the rules, we just report them 🙈)

---

🐛 BUG REPORTING 🐛

please submit bug reports using the issue tracker of the github repository page https://github.com/ftilmann/latexdiff.git, or send them to tilmann -- AT -- gfz-potsdam.de. include the version number of latexdiff-vc (option --version). we love a well-documented bug report, it's giving considerate 💖

---

✨ AUTHOR ✨

version 1.2.1 copyright (C) 2005-2017 Frederik Tilmann

this program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License Version 3. contributors: S Utcke, H Bruyninckx; some ideas have been inspired by git-latexdiff bash script. C. Junghans: Mercurial Support. (shoutout to the whole squad 👑)

---

and that's the whole page, bestie ✨ this one's from perl v5.34.0, dated 2022-07-14, and it was a whole LATEXDIFF-VC(1) moment. now go diff something cute 💅