Hacktoberfest 2026: the issues maintainers tagged for October, open and beginner-friendly. Browse Hacktoberfest issues

Add diffutils

Open
#44 3 comments 5 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

Assessment

Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Newbie friendliness
48/100
Issue type
Feature
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Quiet
Tech stack
rust
Domain
cli

Research direction

Start by reviewing the repository's existing command implementations and packaging entry points, then compare the upstream uutils/diffutils project linked in the issue. Done means adding the diffutils commands identified in the issue—cmp, diff, diff3, and sdiff—and confirming they are available on Windows.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

C-feature P-backlog

https://github.com/uutils/diffutils

$ dpkg -S $(realpath $(which diff))
diffutils: /usr/bin/diff
$ dpkg -L diffutils | fgrep /bin/
/usr/bin/cmp
/usr/bin/diff
/usr/bin/diff3
/usr/bin/sdiff
PS> "cmp","diff","diff3","sdiff" | % { gcm $_ }
Get-Command: The term 'cmp' is not recognized as a name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or executable program.
Check the spelling of the name, or if a path was included, verify that the path is correct and try again.

CommandType     Name                                               Version    Source
-----------     ----                                               -------    ------
Alias           diff -> Compare-Object
Get-Command: The term 'diff3' is not recognized as a name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or executable program.
Check the spelling of the name, or if a path was included, verify that the path is correct and try again.
Get-Command: The term 'sdiff' is not recognized as a name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or executable program.
Check the spelling of the name, or if a path was included, verify that the path is correct and try again.
Active code page: 65001

C:\>where diff
INFO: Could not find files for the given pattern(s).
Dominant language
Rust
Stars
5.2k
Forks
107
Avg merge
2d 19h
Merged PRs (30d)
4

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

More from microsoft/coreutils

All issues in microsoft/coreutils

Similar issues

More Rust issues

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.