open-vcdiff is an encoder and decoder for the VCDIFF format, as described in RFC 3284 : The VCDIFF Generic Differencing and Compression Data Format (http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3284.txt) A library with a simple API is included, as well as a command-line executable that can apply the encoder and decoder to source, target, and delta files. For further details, please refer to: https://github.com/google/open-vcdiff/wiki/How-to-use-openvcdiff You will need to first synchronize gflags and gtest by running git submodule update --init --recursive Or if you have system installed gflags and/or gtest libraries you can provide -Dvcdiff_use_system_gflags=ON and -Dvcdiff_use_system_gtest=ON` for cmake invokation in the build step. open-vcdiff comes with a CMake build script CMakeLists.txt that can be used on a wide range of platforms ("C" stands for cross-platform.). If you don't have CMake installed already, you can download it for free from . CMake works by generating native makefiles or build projects that can be used in the compiler environment of your choice. The typical workflow starts with: mkdir mybuild # Create a directory to hold the build output. cd mybuild cmake ${OPEN_VCDIFF_DIR} # Generate native build scripts. If you want to disable build of build tests and/or executable and build libraries only replace last command with cmake -Dvcdiff_build_test=OFF -Dvcdiff_build_exec=OFF ${OPEN_VCDIFF_DIR} If you are on a \*nix system, you should now see a Makefile in the current directory. Just type 'make' to build gtest. If you use Windows and have Visual Studio installed, a `gtest.sln` file and several `.vcproj` files will be created. You can then build them using Visual Studio. On Mac OS X with Xcode installed, a `.xcodeproj` file will be generated. After compilation you should have the unit tests as well as `vcdiff`, a simple command-line utility to run the encoder and decoder. Typical usage of vcdiff is as follows (the `<` and `>` are file redirect operations, not optional arguments): vcdiff encode -dictionary file.dict < target_file > delta_file vcdiff decode -dictionary file.dict < delta_file > target_file To see the command-line syntax of vcdiff, use `vcdiff --help` or just `vcdiff`. To run tests just use `make test` inside build directory. To call the encoder from C++ code, assuming that dictionary, target, and delta are all std::string objects: #include // Read this file for interface details [...] open_vcdiff::VCDiffEncoder encoder(dictionary.data(), dictionary.size()); encoder.SetFormatFlags(open_vcdiff::VCD_FORMAT_INTERLEAVED); encoder.Encode(target.data(), target.size(), &delta); Calling the decoder is just as simple: #include // Read this file for interface details [...] open_vcdiff::VCDiffDecoder decoder; decoder.Decode(dictionary.data(), dictionary.size(), delta, &target); When using the encoder, the C++ application must be linked with the library options -lvcdcom and -lvcdenc; when using the decoder, it must be linked with -lvcdcom and -lvcddec. To verify that the package works on your system, especially after making modifications to the source code, please run the unit tests using make check For further details, please refer to: https://github.com/google/open-vcdiff/wiki/How-to-use-openvcdiff