You can use numerous tools to compare/manage branches; md5sum / shasum (md5 is usually useful, though not entirely safe), diff and kin, vimdiff, rsync, fdupes, jdupes, git, hg.
I went the βgitβ way once and I found it really cool! With all the goodies you get for free from git, like applying patches, checking differences, resetting to previous state etc.
You can use numerous tools to compare/manage branches; md5sum / shasum (md5 is usually useful, though not entirely safe), diff and kin, vimdiff, rsync, fdupes, jdupes, git, hg.