How can I get a side-by-side diff when I do git diff

Question

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

User · Accepted Answer

Although Git has an internal implementation of diff, you can set up an external tool instead.

There are two different ways to specify an external diff tool:

setting the GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF and the GIT_DIFF_OPTS environment variables.
configuring the external diff tool via git config

See also:

https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Customizing-Git-Git-Configuration
git diff --help
http://www.pixelbeat.org/programming/diffs/

When doing a git diff, Git checks both the settings of above environment variables and its .gitconfig file.

By default, Git passes the following seven arguments to the diff program:

path  old-file  old-hex old-mode  new-file  new-hex new-mode

You typically only need the old-file and new-file parameters. Of course most diff tools only take two file names as an argument. This means that you need to write a small wrapper-script, which takes the arguments which Git provides to the script, and hands them on to the external git program of your choice.

Let's say you put your wrapper-script under ~/scripts/my_diff.sh:

#!/bin/bash
# un-comment one diff tool you'd like to use

# side-by-side diff with custom options:
# /usr/bin/sdiff -w200 -l "$2" "$5" 

# using kdiff3 as the side-by-side diff:
# /usr/bin/kdiff3 "$2" "$5"

# using Meld 
/usr/bin/meld "$2" "$5"

# using VIM
# /usr/bin/vim -d "$2" "$5"

you then need to make that script executable:

chmod a+x ~/scripts/my_diff.sh

you then need to tell Git how and where to find your custom diff wrapper script. You have three choices how to do that: (I prefer editing the .gitconfig file)

Using GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF, GIT_DIFF_OPTS

e.g. in your .bashrc or .bash_profile file you can set:
```
GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF=$HOME/scripts/my_diff.sh
export GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF
```
Using git config

use "git config" to define where your wrapper script can be found:
```
git config --global diff.external ~/scripts/my_diff.sh
```
Editing your ~/.gitconfig file

you can edit your ~/.gitconfig file to add these lines:
```
[diff]
  external = ~/scripts/my_diff.sh
```

Note:

Similarly to installing your custom diff tool, you can also install a custom merge-tool, which could be a visual merging tool to better help visualizing the merge. (see the progit.org page)

See: http://fredpalma.com/518/visual-diff-and-merge-tool/ and https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Customizing-Git-Git-Configuration

User · Answer

Try git difftool Use git difftool instead of git diff  You ll never go back  UPDATE to add an example usage  Here is a link to another stackoverflow that talks about git difftool   How do I view   39 git diff  39  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  lt tool gt   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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

This question showed up when I was searching for a fast way to use git builtin way to locate differences  My solution criteria     Fast startup  needed builtin options Can handle many formats easily  xml  different programming languages Quickly identify small code changes in big textfiles   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

User · Answer

This may be a somewhat limited solution  but does the job using the system s diff command without external tools  diff -y   lt  git show from-rev the file path   lt  git show to-rev the file path    filter just the change lines use --suppress-common-lines  if your diff supports the option   no colors in this case  just the usual diff markers can tweak the column width --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

User · Answer

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  lt  git show REF1 path to file   lt  git show REF2 path to file    where REF1 and REF2 are git references     tags  branches or hashes

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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  gt  dev null  git diff

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

export GIT EXTERNAL DIFF  meld  2  5  echo  gt  dev null    then simply   git diff

User · Answer

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  quot sdiff -w   tput cols  quot   quot      quot    less  Save it as  usr bin git-sdiff and chmod  x it  Then you ll be able to do this    git sdiff HEAD   Extra Tip 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  quot icdiff --cols   tput cols  quot   quot      quot    less

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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   lt FILENAME gt   no such path in the working tree Use  git  lt command gt  --  lt path gt      to specify paths that do not exist locally    Git commands that now produce side-by-side diffing   git diff  lt SHA1 gt   lt SHA2 gt   git difftool  lt SHA1 gt   lt SHA2 gt  git showw  lt SHA gt    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

User · Answer

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  lt  lt -HERE     USAGE        basename  1   lt file gt       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

[git] How can I get a side-by-side diff when I do "git diff"?

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