Simple Ruby script that allows you to watch Property list changes (f.e. in `~/Library/Preferences`) that you can catch, export to a dot file & synchronise between multiple machines. 👍

system_settings_differ.rb

#!/usr/bin/env ruby

# Prerequisities:
#   - brew install fswawtch
#   - gem install diffy
# Usage:
#   cd ~/Library/Preferences; ruby system_settings_differ.rb

require 'pp'
require 'pty'
require 'diffy'

plist_files = { }

files = `find "$PWD" -name '*.plist'`.split "\n"

files.each{|file|
  plist_files[file] = `plutil -p #{file}`
}

cmd = "fswatch ."

filtered = [
  'ContextStoreAgent.plist',
  'com.apple.xpc.activity2.plist',
  'com.apple.knowledge-agent.plist',
]

begin
  PTY.spawn(cmd) do |stdin, stdout, pid|
    begin
      stdin.each {|line|
        line = line.strip
        next if plist_files[line] == nil
        new_content = `plutil -p #{line}`
        diff = Diffy::Diff.new(plist_files[line], new_content, :context => 1).to_s
        next if diff.length < 5
        next if filtered.include? File.basename line
        puts line + ":"
        puts diff
        plist_files[line] = new_content

      }
    rescue Errno::EIO
      puts "Errno:EIO error, but this probably just means " +
            "that the process has finished giving output"
    end
  end
rescue PTY::ChildExited
  puts "The child process exited!"
end