[ale] Best way to track changes to a directory?

[Chris Fowler]

I have a developer working in a directory of almost 1G in size.   Many files intalled there using a specific and strict package management system.  I developed the system ,bui I don't want this developer to have to spend time trying to learn it as they install thigs like tomcat, our software, etc.  It is better for me if the treated the directory like any other, did their install, and then I reverse engineer what they did create a MAkefile that will build and install it using the strict system.  My thoughts on this is to compare a pristine directory against the same after they've done work, but how?  The system is so strict that if I purge each package, I am left with files that would be considered config like you'd find in /etc. Files that are not part of /run /etc /log are required to be links into their pkg directory.  Much easier for the developer to so an install into the directory as they normally would since I've been working with this strict system for years.

Take a snapshot of /opt/name now, take one tomorrow, and diff the snapshots?
Do I copy /opt/name to /opt/name.prisine and then use rsync to compare?
Do I do find /opt/name > ~/name.pristne, find /opt/name > ~ /name.changed and then use diff to compare?

I have the ablity to do a 'make full-build' in my src directory and it deletes /opt/name and recreates it.  This would blow
away everything this developer did that day.  What is the best way to copy only their changes ~/name.$(date +%s)?
Could rsync compare /op[/name.pristine against /opt/name and only put new files in /opt/name into ~/name.$(date +%s)?

The easiest way may simply be to use the tools I wrote during development of the system to find stray files.  Do a find /opt/name looking for anything that is NOT a symlink and then log those results.  This was used during the period of converting each PKG from nomal install into a DESTDIR install, tar, and deploy.  Some older packages would still install stuff in /. This tool was also used to audit the result template of a full-build for stray files. I'm more interested in ways to compare the result template to one that has been changed by someone else.

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