When I type "git diff", I'd like to see a side-by-side diff, like with "diff -y", or like to display the diff in an interactive diff tool like "kdiff3". How can this be done?
This question is related to
git
git-diff
code-visualization
You can do a side-by-side diff
using sdiff
as follows:
$ git difftool -y -x sdiff HEAD^ | less
where HEAD^
is an example that you should replace with whatever you want to diff against.
I found this solution here where there are a couple of other suggestions also. However, this one answer's the OP's question succinctly and clearly.
See the man git-difftool for an explanation of the arguments.
Taking the comments on board, you can create a handy git sdiff
command by writing the following executable script:
#!/bin/sh
git difftool -y -x "sdiff -w $(tput cols)" "${@}" | less
Save it as /usr/bin/git-sdiff
and chmod +x
it. Then you'll be able to do this:
$ git sdiff HEAD^
As suggested in comments you can use icdiff
to do what sdiff
does with colored output:
$ more /usr/bin/git-sdiff
#!/bin/sh
git difftool -y -x "icdiff --cols=$(tput cols)" "${@}" | less
You can also try git diff --word-diff
.
It's not exactly side-by-side, but somehow better, so you might prefer it to your actual side-by-side need.
Use git difftool
instead of git diff
. You'll never go back.
Here is a link to another stackoverflow that talks about git difftool
: How do I view 'git diff' output with my preferred diff tool/ viewer?
For newer versions of git
, the difftool
command supports many external diff tools out-of-the-box. For example vimdiff
is auto supported and can be opened from the command line by:
cd /path/to/git/repo
git difftool --tool=vimdiff
Other supported external diff tools are listed via git difftool --tool-help
here is an example output:
'git difftool --tool=<tool>' may be set to one of the following:
araxis
kompare
vimdiff
vimdiff2
The following tools are valid, but not currently available:
bc3
codecompare
deltawalker
diffuse
ecmerge
emerge
gvimdiff
gvimdiff2
kdiff3
meld
opendiff
tkdiff
xxdiff
If you'd like to see side-by-side diffs in a browser without involving GitHub, you might enjoy git webdiff, a drop-in replacement for git diff
:
$ pip install webdiff
$ git webdiff
This offers a number of advantages over traditional GUI difftools like tkdiff
in that it can give you syntax highlighting and show image diffs.
Read more about it here.
There are a lot of good answers on this thread. My solution for this issue was to write a script.
Name this 'git-scriptname' (and make it executable and put it in your PATH, like any script), and you can invoke it like a normal git command by running
$ git scriptname
The actual functionality is just the last line. Here's the source:
#!/usr/bin/env zsh
#
# Show a side-by-side diff of a particular file how it currently exists between:
# * the file system
# * in HEAD (latest committed changes)
function usage() {
cat <<-HERE
USAGE
$(basename $1) <file>
Show a side-by-side diff of a particular file between the current versions:
* on the file system (latest edited changes)
* in HEAD (latest committed changes)
HERE
}
if [[ $# = 0 ]]; then
usage $0
exit
fi
file=$1
diff -y =(git show HEAD:$file) $file | pygmentize -g | less -R
Here's an approach. If you pipe through less, the xterm width is set to 80, which ain't so hot. But if you proceed the command with, e.g. COLS=210, you can utilize your expanded xterm.
gitdiff()
{
local width=${COLS:-$(tput cols)}
GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF="diff -yW$width \$2 \$5; echo >/dev/null" git diff "$@"
}
Open Intellij IDEA, select a single or multiple commits in the "Version Control" tool window, browse changed files, and double click them to inspect changes side by side for each file.
With the bundled command-line launcher you can bring IDEA up anywhere with a simple idea some/path
ydiff
Formerly called cdiff
, this tool can display side by side, incremental, and colorful diff.
Instead of doing git diff
, do:
ydiff -s -w0
This will launch ydiff
in side-by-side display mode for each of the files with differences.
Install with:
python3 -m pip install --user ydiff
-or-
brew install ydiff
For git log
, you can use:
ydiff -ls -w0
-w0
auto-detects your terminal width. See the ydiff
GitHub repository page for detail and demo.
Tested in Git 2.18.0, ydiff 1.1.
This may be a somewhat limited solution, but does the job using the system's diff
command without external tools:
diff -y <(git show from-rev:the/file/path) <(git show to-rev:the/file/path)
--suppress-common-lines
(if your diff
supports the option).diff
markers--width=term-width
; in Bash can get the width as $COLUMNS
or tput cols
.This can be wrapped into a helper git-script too for more convenience, for example, usage like this:
git diffy the/file/path --from rev1 --to rev2
For unix, combining just git
and the built-in diff
:
git show HEAD:path/to/file | diff -y - path/to/file
Of course, you can replace HEAD with any other git reference, and you probably want to add something like -W 170
to the diff command.
This assumes that you are just comparing your directory contents with a past commit. Comparing between two commits is more complex. If your shell is bash
you can use "process substitution":
diff -y -W 170 <(git show REF1:path/to/file) <(git show REF2:path/to/file)
where REF1
and REF2
are git references – tags, branches or hashes.
This question showed up when I was searching for a fast way to use git builtin way to locate differences. My solution criteria:
I found this answer to get color in git.
To get side by side diff instead of line diff I tweaked mb14's excellent answer on this question with the following parameters:
$ git diff --word-diff-regex="[A-Za-z0-9. ]|[^[:space:]]"
If you do not like the extra [- or {+ the option --word-diff=color
can be used.
$ git diff --word-diff-regex="[A-Za-z0-9. ]|[^[:space:]]" --word-diff=color
That helped to get proper comparison with both json and xml text and java code.
In summary the --word-diff-regex
options has a helpful visibility together with color settings to get a colorized side by side source code experience compared to the standard line diff, when browsing through big files with small line changes.
I personally really like icdiff !
If you're on Mac OS X
with HomeBrew
, just do brew install icdiff
.
To get the file labels correctly, plus other cool features, I have in my ~/.gitconfig
:
[pager]
difftool = true
[diff]
tool = icdiff
[difftool "icdiff"]
cmd = icdiff --head=5000 --highlight --line-numbers -L \"$BASE\" -L \"$REMOTE\" \"$LOCAL\" \"$REMOTE\"
And I use it like: git difftool
I use colordiff.
On Mac OS X, install it with
$ sudo port install colordiff
On Linux is possibly apt get install colordiff
or something like that, depending on your distro.
Then:
$ git difftool --extcmd="colordiff -ydw" HEAD^ HEAD
Or create an alias
$ git alias diffy "difftool --extcmd=\"colordiff -ydw\""
Then you can use it
$ git diffy HEAD^ HEAD
I called it "diffy" because diff -y
is the side-by-side diff in unix. Colordiff also adds colors, that are nicer.
In the option -ydw
, the y
is for the side-by-side, the w
is to ignore whitespaces, and the d
is to produce the minimal diff (usually you get a better result as diff)
export GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF='meld $2 $5; echo >/dev/null'
then simply:
git diff
Several others already mentioned cdiff for git side-by-side diffing but no one gave a full implementation of it.
Setup cdiff:
git clone https://github.com/ymattw/cdiff.git
cd cdiff
ln -s `pwd`/cdiff ~/bin/cdiff
hash -r # refresh your PATH executable in bash (or 'rehash' if you use tcsh)
# or just create a new terminal
Edit ~/.gitconfig inserting these lines:
[pager]
diff = false
show = false
[diff]
tool = cdiff
external = "cdiff -s $2 $5 #"
[difftool "cdiff"]
cmd = cdiff -s \"$LOCAL\" \"$REMOTE\"
[alias]
showw = show --ext-dif
The pager off is needed for cdiff to work with Diff, it is essentially a pager anyway so this is fine. Difftool will work regardless of these settings.
The show alias is needed because git show only supports external diff tools via argument.
The '#' at the end of the diff external command is important. Git's diff command appends a $@ (all available diff variables) to the diff command, but we only want the two filenames. So we call out those two explicitly with $2 and $5, and then hide the $@ behind a comment which would otherwise confuse sdiff. Resulting in an error that looks like:
fatal: <FILENAME>: no such path in the working tree
Use 'git <command> -- <path>...' to specify paths that do not exist locally.
Git commands that now produce side-by-side diffing:
git diff <SHA1> <SHA2>
git difftool <SHA1> <SHA2>
git showw <SHA>
Cdiff usage:
'SPACEBAR' - Advances the page of the current file.
'Q' - Quits current file, thus advancing you to the next file.
You now have side-by-side diff via git diff and difftool. And you have the cdiff python source code for power user customization should you need it.
Source: Stackoverflow.com