GNU bug report logs - #67334
diffoscope: missing/undetected dependencies?

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Message #5 received at submit <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Christopher Howard <christopher <at> librehacker.com>
To: Bug Guix <bug-guix <at> gnu.org>
Subject: diffoscope: missing/undetected dependencies?
Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2023 08:21:14 -0900

Hi, recently I tried to use diffoscope to compare to PDFs. I got these errors:

│┄ xxd not available in path. Falling back to Python hexlify.
│┄ 'pdftotext' not available in path. Falling back to binary comparison.

I found that if I installed packages `xxd' and `xpdf' into my environment, the errors go away and I can compare line-by-line as expected.

Here is my system information:

```
Generation 53	Nov 06 2023 09:39:57	(current)
  guix 3f83dc5
    repository URL: https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/guix.git
    branch: master
    commit: 3f83dc5587573f173b1f61864c9b510f05de84b1
```

```
christopher <at> theoden 
------------------- 
OS: Guix System x86_64 
Host: OptiPlex 9020 00 
Kernel: 5.15.137-gnu 
Uptime: 19 hours, 34 mins 
Packages: 99 (guix-system), 214 (guix-user) 
Shell: bash 5.1.16 
Resolution: 1920x1080 
DE: GNOME 
Theme: Adwaita [GTK2/3] 
Icons: Adwaita [GTK2/3] 
Terminal: shepherd 
CPU: Intel i5-4570 (4) @ 3.600GHz 
GPU: AMD ATI Radeon HD 8490 / R5 235X OEM 
GPU: Intel HD Graphics 
Memory: 4145MiB / 7867MiB 
```

-- 
📛 Christopher Howard
🚀 gemini://gem.librehacker.com
🌐 http://gem.librehacker.com

בראשית ברא אלהים את השמים ואת הארץ

Message #10 received at 67334-done <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Vagrant Cascadian <vagrant <at> reproducible-builds.org>
To: Christopher Howard <christopher <at> librehacker.com>,
 67334-done <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#67334: diffoscope: missing/undetected dependencies?
Date: Thu, 07 Mar 2024 10:38:50 -0800

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

On 2023-11-21, Christopher Howard wrote:
> Hi, recently I tried to use diffoscope to compare to PDFs. I got these errors:
>
> │┄ xxd not available in path. Falling back to Python hexlify.
> │┄ 'pdftotext' not available in path. Falling back to binary comparison.
>
> I found that if I installed packages `xxd' and `xpdf' into my environment, the errors go away and I can compare line-by-line as expected.

It is impractical to install all of the available tools that diffoscope
supports, as it supports an absurd number of file formats and thus uses
a very large number of tools.

You can call "diffoscope --list-missing" to give suggestions about
packages you might want to add, and as you've observed, diffoscope
suggests what to install to get better support for the files it is
currently testing.


live well,
  vagrant

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