sdiff

Semantic diff between C header files

This tool piggybacks on the output of ctags to build a list of declared symbols: constants, macros, typedefs, global variables, function prototypes, and function definitions. Each symbol is registered by name, file name, type, and function signature where applicable.

Use

The program expects two names. Those names can either be a C header file or a directory containing C header files. For directories, no recursive search is performed, they must contain a flat structure with all header files at the same level.

The first provided name is the reference: it contains all symbols that need to be defined.

The second provided name is a candidate. All header files will be parsed and searched for symbols present in the reference.

The program output describes:

• What symbols are declared in both reference and candidate.
• What symbols differ between reference and candidate.

Differing symbols can be:

• Symbols declared differently: one could be a function and another a macro
• Structs that do not have identical members
• Functions that do not have identical prototypes
• Typedefs that have the same name but different definitions

The program does not parse defines and macros, so they could have different values between reference and candidate.

Run with -v to get more a verbose output.