# Diff or compare tool?

**URL:** <https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/diff-or-compare-tool/13989>\
**Category:** Ignition\
**Created:** [April 6, 2017, 9:05pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/diff-or-compare-tool/13989 "2017-04-06T21:05:33Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![fledder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e19b73/32.png) [@fledder](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/fledder)\
**Post date:** [April 6, 2017, 9:05pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/diff-or-compare-tool/13989/1 "2017-04-06T21:05:33Z")

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Is there a tool that will compare two .gwbks and output the specific differences between them? I’m trying to roll my own here as I couldn’t find one, but curious if there’s anything out there.

Use case: I have a dev / test environment that has diverged somewhat from the online production environment, so I don’t want to do a wholesale .gwbk restore, but need to make sure I don’t miss anything when restoring to the production environment piece by piece.

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**Author:** ![paul-griffith](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/paul-griffith/32/37249_2.png) [@paul-griffith](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/paul-griffith)\
**Post date:** [April 6, 2017, 9:57pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/diff-or-compare-tool/13989/2 "2017-04-06T21:57:28Z")

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The .gwbk is just a renamed ZIP file, so I would focus your efforts on the .idb files within. SQLite publishes a program called [SQLDiff](https://sqlite.org/sqldiff.html) which would theoretically give you an idea of the differences between the two internal database files.

Be aware, though, that this way lies a lot of potential trouble. Any manual changes you make to the internal database are not guaranteed to work, and can very easily break the entire file. Backup your backups, as it were.

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**Author:** ![fledder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e19b73/32.png) [@fledder](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/fledder)\
**Post date:** [April 10, 2017, 5:25pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/diff-or-compare-tool/13989/3 "2017-04-10T17:25:47Z")

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That’s what I’m thinking. I’m just looking for a “what changed” that would allow me to manually export / import from the Designer… there’s no way I’d try a manual DB merge on something like that.

I’ll update if I come up with anything.