Install

1. Static binary (one line)

The fastest and most portable install path. Use x eget — x-cmd's wrapper around the upstream GitHub release pipeline:

x eget ljh-sh/wdiff

The installed binaries are wdiff, diff, and the man pages. The wdiff binary is compiled with DIFF_PROGRAM absolute-pathed to the bundled diff binary — so the runtime lookup of diff is fully predictable, no $PATH traversal.

After install:

$ wdiff --version | head -1
wdiff (GNU wdiff) 1.2.2

$ diff --version | head -1
diff (GNU diffutils) 3.10

What the eget install does

x eget ljh-sh/wdiff picks the right per-target tarball for your OS/arch, downloads it, verifies its SHA256 against the top-level SHA256SUMS shipped in the GitHub release, and untars the bin/ + man/ + README.md into your x-cmd local directory. No sudo, no system-package manager, no glibc / diff / ncurses to install.

2. Manual per-target download

If you can't use x-cmd, head to the GitHub Releases page and pick the tarball for your target. Each release publishes 5 archives + 5 .sha256 + a top-level SHA256SUMS.

Example (Linux x86_64 musl):

curl -L -o wdiff.tar.gz https://github.com/ljh-sh/wdiff/releases/latest/download/wdiff-x86_64-linux-musl.tar.gz
curl -L -o wdiff.tar.gz.sha256 https://github.com/ljh-sh/wdiff/releases/latest/download/wdiff-x86_64-linux-musl.tar.gz.sha256
sha256sum -c wdiff.tar.gz.sha256
tar xzf wdiff.tar.gz
sudo install -m 0755 wdiff-x86_64-linux-musl/bin/wdiff wdiff-x86_64-linux-musl/bin/diff /usr/local/bin/
sudo install -m 0644 wdiff-x86_64-linux-musl/man/man1/*.1 /usr/local/share/man/man1/ 2>/dev/null || true

On macOS, use shasum -a 256 instead of sha256sum; on Windows, use Get-FileHash -Algorithm SHA256.

3. Build from source (vendoring update)

This repo ships upstream/wdiff/ and upstream/diffutils/ as clean copies (no local patches). To refresh:

# wdiff
curl -L -o /tmp/wdiff.tar.gz https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/wdiff/wdiff-1.2.2.tar.gz
rm -rf upstream/wdiff && tar xzf /tmp/wdiff.tar.gz -C upstream/ \
  && mv upstream/wdiff-1.2.2 upstream/wdiff

# diffutils
curl -L -o /tmp/diffutils.tar.xz https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/diffutils/diffutils-3.10.tar.xz
rm -rf upstream/diffutils && tar xJf /tmp/diffutils.tar.xz -C upstream/ \
  && mv upstream/diffutils-3.10 upstream/diffutils

Then run bash scripts/build.sh && bash scripts/smoke.sh to reproduce the CI locally. For a true musl-static build:

docker run --rm --platform linux/amd64 -v "$PWD":/w -w /w alpine:3.20 \
    sh -c 'apk add --no-cache bash gettext-dev libxslt >/dev/null \
      && bash /w/scripts/build-alpine.sh && bash /w/scripts/smoke.sh'

See build audit for the per-target SHAs and the scripts/build.sh source.