GNU diff utilities: diffutils-3.12 released

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Apr 11, 2025

This is to announce diffutils-3.12, a stable bug-fix release.
Thanks to Paul Eggert and Collin Funk for the bug fixes.


There have been 13 commits by 4 people in the 9 weeks since 3.11.


See the NEWS below for a brief summary.


Thanks to everyone who has contributed!
The following people contributed changes to this release:


  Collin Funk (1)
  Jim Meyering (6)
  Paul Eggert (5)
  Simon Josefsson (1)


Jim
 [on behalf of the diffutils maintainers]
==================================================================


Here is the GNU diffutils home page:
    https://gnu.org/s/diffutils/


Here are the compressed sources:
  https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/diffutils/diffutils-3.12.tar.gz   (3.3MB)
  https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/diffutils/diffutils-3.12.tar.xz   (1.9MB)


Here are the GPG detached signatures:
  https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/diffutils/diffutils-3.12.tar.gz.sig
  https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/diffutils/diffutils-3.12.tar.xz.sig


Use a mirror for higher download bandwidth:
  https://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html


Here are the SHA1 and SHA256 checksums:


  e3f3e8ef171fcb54911d1493ac6066aa3ed9df38  diffutils-3.12.tar.gz
  W+GBsn7Diq0kUAgGYaZOShdSuym31QUr8KAqcPYj+bI=  diffutils-3.12.tar.gz
  c2f302726d2709c6881c4657430a671abe5eedfa  diffutils-3.12.tar.xz
  fIt/n8hgkUH96pzs6FJJ0whiQ5H/Yd7a9Sj8szdyff0=  diffutils-3.12.tar.xz


Verify the base64 SHA256 checksum with cksum -a sha256 --check
from coreutils-9.2 or OpenBSD's cksum since 2007.


Use a .sig file to verify that the corresponding file (without the
.sig suffix) is intact.  First, be sure to download both the .sig file
and the corresponding tarball.  Then, run a command like this:


  gpg --verify diffutils-3.12.tar.gz.sig


The signature should match the fingerprint of the following key:


  pub   rsa4096/0x7FD9FCCB000BEEEE 2010-06-14 [SCEA]
        Key fingerprint = 155D 3FC5 00C8 3448 6D1E  EA67 7FD9 FCCB 000B EEEE
  uid                   [ unknown] Jim Meyering <jim@meyering.net>
  uid                   [ unknown] Jim Meyering <meyering@fb.com>
  uid                   [ unknown] Jim Meyering <meyering@gnu.org>


If that command fails because you don't have the required public key,
or that public key has expired, try the following commands to retrieve
or refresh it, and then rerun the 'gpg --verify' command.


  gpg --locate-external-key jim@meyering.net


  gpg --recv-keys 7FD9FCCB000BEEEE


  wget -q -O- 'https://savannah.gnu.org/project/release-gpgkeys.php?group=diffutils&download=1' | gpg --import -


As a last resort to find the key, you can try the official GNU
keyring:


  wget -q https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-keyring.gpg
  gpg --keyring gnu-keyring.gpg --verify diffutils-3.12.tar.gz.sig


This release is based on the diffutils git repository, available as


  git clone https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/diffutils.git


with commit 16681a3cbcea47e82683c713b0dac7d59d85a6fa tagged as v3.12.


For a summary of changes and contributors, see:


  https://git.sv.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=diffutils.git;a=shortlog;h=v3.12


or run this command from a git-cloned diffutils directory:


  git shortlog v3.11..v3.12


This release was bootstrapped with the following tools:
  Autoconf 2.72.76-2f64
  Automake 1.17.0.91
  Gnulib 2025-04-04 3773db653242ab7165cd300295c27405e4f9cc79


NEWS


* Noteworthy changes in release 3.12 (2025-04-08) [stable]


** Bug fixes


  diff -r no longer merely summarizes when comparing an empty regular
  file to a nonempty regular file.
  [bug#76452 introduced in 3.11]


  diff -y no longer crashes when given nontrivial differences.
  [bug#76613 introduced in 3.11]

Read on