micmath blog

This seems like a very simple trick, but it's one that I've found extremely useful: generating a list of every file on a remote server that's not the same as the copy on my local machine.

As part of my workflow I always keep an entire working copy of any websites I work on, databases included, on my development machine. This allows me work on the site without fear of breaking the live site. When I'm happy with the way my local copy is working I can then copy any files I've changed up to the live server via SFTP.

At this point I'd really like a list of exactly which files have changed, either on my local copy or on the live site. The command line tool diff is perfect for this kind of job, but not so good if you only have SFTP access to the live site. The answer is to use SSHFS and FUSE to mount your remote folder onto your desktop. Then you can use any tool or application on your local machine against that mounted folder, exactly as if it were sitting on your local computer.

There are great tools that give you a nice GUI for SSHFS but I already use Panic's Transmit to connect with FTP servers, and that comes with a "Mount favorite as disk" button that just works. So once you have your live site sitting on your desktop, you can then run diff commands like the following, which will list every file that is not the same in two folders.

diff -rq /my/local/copy/ /Volumes/example.com/public_html/

(Yes, I know Transmit has a "Synchronise" feature that purports to do this same task, but unfortunately it uses the file modified times to decide if something has changed, and at least on my servers, the remote system times frequently get out of sync with my desktop, causing Transmit to report that every single file is different. The diff tool on the other hand compares the contents of each file, which is a much more robust approach.)