Any reaper utility to show diff between two reaper project files?

keyman_sam · 01-25-2016, 11:27 PM

Need this urgently - I have a few backups - want to find out the difference between them - any ideas? Other than opening the project, that is.

richie43 · 01-25-2016, 11:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by keyman_sam

Need this urgently - I have a few backups - want to find out the difference between them - any ideas? Other than opening the project, that is.

You can open them in any text editor (like Notepad) and read them. Not ideal, but it's saved me before. You can even fix many things this way by changing the text inside.

cfillion · 01-26-2016, 12:10 AM

REAPER projects file are human readable, so they can be compared using any text diff tools.

If you are on OS X you can run the following command in a Terminal.app window to get the differences between two projects:

Code:

diff ProjectA.RPP ProjectB.RPP

Or on Windows, in a cmd.exe prompt:

Code:

fc ProjectA.RPP ProjectB.RPP

If you prefer GUIs, on Windows there is http://winmerge.org/.

keyman_sam · 01-26-2016, 12:42 AM

Wait, but how do you read a text file? Is it practical for a large project?

IXix · 01-26-2016, 02:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by keyman_sam

Wait, but how do you read a text file? Is it practical for a large project?

They're "readable" but they're not very readable. Using a diff tool won't tell you very much about what's different between them. You can see things like tracks, media items and plugins but the fine detail of the various settings is pretty cryptic, especially for VSTs and such.

toddhisattva · 01-26-2016, 10:13 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by keyman_sam

Wait, but how do you read a text file? Is it practical for a large project?

On Windows you can use Notepad to read (and edit, if you dare ;-) text files.

On Mac I use BBEdit, they have a free editor called "TextWrangler" http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/

BTW, a "text file" is pretty much like the posting window on this forum. It's basically the "typewriter" characters only. Notice how we have use the preview window to see how it will really look - this here "text editor"-like posting window can only handle text file characters, and our formatting must be spelled out in those characters.

IXix said, "They're 'readable' but they're not very readable."

One of these days such a file will win a Nobel Literature Prize.

EpicSounds · 01-26-2016, 10:20 AM

There's a web app for viewing rpp files

http://reaperblog.net/2013/11/rpp-viewer/

Fabian · 01-26-2016, 01:46 PM

I have tried to use WinDiff for exactly this, but it doesn't really work.

One thing is that WinDiff easily gets confused and then flags the rest of the two files as different even though you can see that they are very similar.

Also, most changes between projects, at least late in the production once most of everything is recorded, would be between FX settings, and those are UU-encoded in the *.rpp, which means that you have no clue about what is different or not.

I spent a week or so trying to come up with some useful workaround, but eventually gave up. The best way to compare two (versions of the same) project(s) seems to by ear...

EDIT: Hm... I haven't seen the web app linked to above before... Maybe if you put in first one project and save the output from the web app, and then the other project, then maybe using WinDiff would make some sense... The UU-encode problem would persist, though.

X-Raym · 01-14-2019, 01:15 PM

Pure text comparison doesn't work well for complex cases (for eg, it won't tell you that an item on a track has been moved, it will just tell you that a part have been deleted at some place in the rpp and another added somewhere, but you don't know if they are related).

Also, for VST parameter it is pretty unreadable.

Only a complex script could do the trick

(checking every items and track GUID, checking if they are in the other project, and if yes, if they have change etc).

X-Raym · 01-21-2019, 03:27 AM

In fact, the most advanced way I found was to first export my projects as HTML and then do the comparison on the HTML with a diff checker.

It doesn't support all REAPER features (stretch markers, envelopes, sends etc) but for basic projects it can do the trick.

Here is a modified FX:

Here is a new track:

Here I can see human readable FX values (not avaible with pure .rpp comparison).

Supporting all REAPER variables (tempo map, markers, regions, extstate etc... would require quite a lot of work).

Note: if HTML markup bother you, you can export with CSV with these scripts too :P But I like to see each table rows being indented.