An open source library I listed in my post HTMLDiff Software Discoveries was written in C, so I want to list the steps I went through to compile it.
The library, htmldiff, is meant to find differences (deletions, insertions), between two documents.
The download provides C libraries. Here are the steps I took to compile it and make it usable:
wget http://www.w3.org/2003/01/BB_htmldiff-0.4.tar.gz
tar -xvzf BB_htmldiff-0.4.tar.gz
cd htmldiff-0.4/
./configure
make
make check
sudo make install
Then to run the program, the following execution command will get you the basics:
./htmldiff sample-file-1.html sample-file-2.html
There are many flags that you can optionally pass in. They can be seen with ./htmldiff --help, and are as follows:
wdiff - Compares words in two files and report differences.
Usage: ./htmldiff [OPTION]... FILE1 FILE2
Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too.
-C, --copyright print copyright then exit
-K, --no-init-term like -t, but no termcap init/term strings
-V, --version print program version then exit
-1, --no-deleted inhibit output of deleted words
-2, --no-inserted inhibit output of inserted words
-3, --no-common inhibit output of common words
-a, --auto-pager automatically calls a pager
-h, --help print this help
-i, --ignore-case fold character case while comparing
-l, --less-mode variation of printer mode for "less"
-n, --avoid-wraps do not extend fields through newlines
-p, --printer overstrike as for printers
-s, --statistics say how many words deleted, inserted etc.
-t, --terminal use termcap as for terminal displays
-w, --start-delete=STRING string to mark beginning of delete region
-x, --end-delete=STRING string to mark end of delete region
-y, --start-insert=STRING string to mark beginning of insert region
-z, --end-insert=STRING string to mark end of insert region
Report bugs to <wdiff-bugs@iro.umontreal.ca>.
I'm trying to configure the program to be a little more specific to my needs at the moment. I'll update this post if I find a way to make the diff process a little less sensitive.