Re: [bug-diffutils] diff: support for --no-dereference option

[Bruno Haible]

Andreas Gruenbacher wrote:
> In the two directories case, I really don't see when following symlinks
> would be desirable.  Here, diff is comparable to a tool like tar, for
> example -- in the tar case, I want to archive what's really there; in
> the diff case, I want to compare what's really there.

Take an example. I often move subdirectories and big files from one disk
to another one, for disk space reasons, and leave in a symlink that points
to the new location. When I now prepare a backup, I'll use "tar chf -".
And to compare the backup with the original contents, I use "diff -r".

I claim that this use-case is more frequent than the one which does not
follow symlinks. Proof: GNU diff users were happy with the existing behaviour
for 20 years.

Bruno