How To Install diffutils on Ubuntu 20.04

In this tutorial we learn how to install diffutils on Ubuntu 20.04. diffutils is File comparison utilities

Introduction

In this tutorial we learn how to install diffutils on Ubuntu 20.04.

What is diffutils

diffutils is:

The diffutils package provides the diff, diff3, sdiff, and cmp programs.

diff' shows differences between two files, or each corresponding file in two directories. cmp’ shows the offsets and line numbers where two files differ. cmp' can also show all the characters that differ between the two files, side by side. diff3’ shows differences among three files. `sdiff’ merges two files interactively.

The set of differences produced by diff' can be used to distribute updates to text files (such as program source code) to other people. This method is especially useful when the differences are small compared to the complete files. Given diff’ output, the `patch’ program can update, or “patch”, a copy of the file. Task: minimal

There are three methods to install diffutils on Ubuntu 20.04. We can use apt-get, apt and aptitude. In the following sections we will describe each method. You can choose one of them.

Install diffutils Using apt-get

Update apt database with apt-get using the following command.

sudo apt-get update

After updating apt database, We can install diffutils using apt-get by running the following command:

sudo apt-get -y install diffutils

Install diffutils Using apt

Update apt database with apt using the following command.

sudo apt update

After updating apt database, We can install diffutils using apt by running the following command:

sudo apt -y install diffutils

Install diffutils Using aptitude

If you want to follow this method, you might need to install aptitude first since aptitude is usually not installed by default on Ubuntu. Update apt database with aptitude using the following command.

sudo aptitude update

After updating apt database, We can install diffutils using aptitude by running the following command:

sudo aptitude -y install diffutils

How To Uninstall diffutils on Ubuntu 20.04

To uninstall only the diffutils package we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get remove diffutils

Uninstall diffutils And Its Dependencies

To uninstall diffutils and its dependencies that are no longer needed by Ubuntu 20.04, we can use the command below:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove diffutils

Remove diffutils Configurations and Data

To remove diffutils configuration and data from Ubuntu 20.04 we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y purge diffutils

Remove diffutils configuration, data, and all of its dependencies

We can use the following command to remove diffutils configurations, data and all of its dependencies, we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove --purge diffutils

References

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to install diffutils package on Ubuntu 20.04 using different package management tools: apt, apt-get and aptitude.