How do I view git diff output with my preferred diff tool viewer

Question

When I type git diff  I want to view the output with my visual diff tool of choice  SourceGear  diffmerge  on Windows   How do I configure git to do this

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this works for me on windows 7  No need for intermediary sh scripts  contents of  gitconfig        diff        tool   kdiff3       difftool         prompt   false       difftool  kdiff3         path   C  Program Files  x86  KDiff3 kdiff3 exe       cmd     LOCAL    REMOTE

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Here s a batch file that works for Windows - assumes DiffMerge installed in default location  handles x64  handles forward to backslash replacement as necessary and has ability to install itself   Should be easy to replace DiffMerge with your favourite diff program   To install   gitvdiff --install    gitvdiff bat    echo off  REM ---- Install  ---- REM To install  run gitvdiff --install  if  1  --install goto install    REM ---- Find DiffMerge ----  if DEFINED ProgramFiles  x86         Set DIFF   ProgramFiles x86   SourceGear DiffMerge DiffMerge exe    else       Set DIFF   ProgramFiles  SourceGear DiffMerge DiffMerge exe       REM ---- Switch forward slashes to back slashes ----  set oldW  2 set oldW  oldW      set newW  5 set newW  newW        REM ---- Launch DiffMerge ----   DIFF   title1  Old Version   oldW   title2  New Version   newW   goto  EOF    REM ---- Install ----  install set selfL   dpnx0 set selfL  selfL       echo on git config --global diff external  selfL   echo off    EOF

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To complete my previous  quot diff external quot  config answer above  As mentioned by Jakub  Git1 6 3 introduced git difftool  originally proposed in September 2008  USAGE   --tool tool   --commit ref   --start ref --end ref   --no-prompt   file to merge    See --extcmd in the last part of this answer   LOCAL contains the contents of the file from the starting revision and  REMOTE contains the contents of the file in the ending revision   BASE contains the contents of the file in the wor  It s basically git-mergetool modified to operate on the git index worktree  The usual use case for this script is when you have either staged or unstaged changes and you d like to see the changes in a side-by-side diff viewer  e g  xxdiff  tkdiff  etc    git difftool   lt filename gt      Another use case is when you d like to see the same information but are comparing arbitrary commits  this is the part where the revarg parsing could be better   git difftool --start HEAD  --end HEAD  --  lt filename gt     The last use case is when you d like to compare your current worktree to something other than HEAD  e g  a tag  git difftool --commit v1 0 0  --  lt filename gt     Note  since Git 2 5  git config diff tool winmerge is enough  See  quot git mergetool winmerge quot  And since Git 1 7 11  you have the option --dir-diff  in order to  to spawn external diff tools that can compare two directory hierarchies at a time after populating two temporary directories  instead of running an instance of the external tool once per a file pair   Before Git 2 5  Practical case for configuring difftool with your custom diff tool  C  myGitRepo gt git config --global diff tool winmerge C  myGitRepo gt git config --global difftool winmerge cmd  quot winmerge sh   quot  LOCAL  quot    quot  REMOTE  quot  quot  C  myGitRepo gt git config --global difftool prompt false  With winmerge sh stored in a directory part of your PATH     bin sh echo Launching WinMergeU exe   1  2  quot C  Program Files WinMerge WinMergeU exe quot  -u -e  quot  1 quot   quot  2 quot  -dl  quot Local quot  -dr  quot Remote quot   If you have another tool  kdiff3  P4Diff        create another shell script  and the appropriate difftool myDiffTool cmd config directive  Then you can easily switch tools with the diff tool config  You have also this blog entry by Dave to add other details   Or this question for the winmergeu options  The interest with this setting is the winmerge shscript  you can customize it to take into account special cases  See for instance David Marble s answer below for an example which deals with   new files in either origin or destination removed files in either origin or destination   As Kem Mason mentions in his answer  you can also avoid any wrapper by using the --extcmd option  --extcmd  lt command gt    Specify a custom command for viewing diffs  git-difftool ignores the configured defaults and runs  command  LOCAL  REMOTE when this option is specified   For instance  this is how gitk is able to run use any diff tool

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You may want to try out xd http   github com jiqingtang xd  which is GUI wrapper for GIT SVN diff  It is NOT a diff tool itself  You run xd when you want to run git diff or svn diff and it will show you a list of files  a preview window and you can launch any diff tool you like  including tkdiff  xxdiff  gvimdiff  emacs ediff   xemacs ediff   meld  diffuse  kompare and kdiff3  You can also run any custom tool   Unfortunately the tool doesn t support Windows   Disclosure  I am the author of this tool

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Since git version 1 6 3 there is  git difftool  which you can configure to use your favorite graphical diff tool   Currently supported out-of-the-box are kdiff3  kompare  tkdiff  meld  xxdiff  emerge  vimdiff  gvimdiff  ecmerge  diffuse and opendiff  if the tool you want to use isn t on this list  you can always use  difftool  lt tool gt  cmd  configuration option    git difftool  accepts the same options as  git diff

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With new git difftool  its as simple as adding this to your  gitconfig file    diff      tool   any-name  difftool  any-name       cmd      C  path to my ext diff exe      LOCAL      REMOTE      Optionally  also add    difftool      prompt   false   Also check out diffall  a simple script I wrote to extend the annoying  IMO  default diff behaviour of opening each in serial   Global  gitconfig on Windows is in  USERPROFILE   gitconfig

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The following can be gleaned from the other answers here  but for me it s difficult   too much information   so here s the  just type it in  answer for tkdiff   git difftool --tool tkdiff  lt path to the file to be diffed gt    You can substitute the executable name of your favorite diffing tool for tkdiff   As long as  e g  tkdiff    or your favorite diffing tool  is in your PATH  it will be launched

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In the spirit of answering questions that are somewhat different than asked   Try this solution     meld my project using git   Meld understands git and provides navigating around the recent changes

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I use kompare on ubuntu   sudo apt-get install kompare   To compare two branches   git difftool -t kompare  lt my branch gt  master

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Here s a batch file that works for Windows - assumes DiffMerge installed in default location  handles x64  handles forward to backslash replacement as necessary and has ability to install itself   Should be easy to replace DiffMerge with your favourite diff program   To install   gitvdiff --install    gitvdiff bat    echo off  REM ---- Install  ---- REM To install  run gitvdiff --install  if  1  --install goto install    REM ---- Find DiffMerge ----  if DEFINED ProgramFiles  x86         Set DIFF   ProgramFiles x86   SourceGear DiffMerge DiffMerge exe    else       Set DIFF   ProgramFiles  SourceGear DiffMerge DiffMerge exe       REM ---- Switch forward slashes to back slashes ----  set oldW  2 set oldW  oldW      set newW  5 set newW  newW        REM ---- Launch DiffMerge ----   DIFF   title1  Old Version   oldW   title2  New Version   newW   goto  EOF    REM ---- Install ----  install set selfL   dpnx0 set selfL  selfL       echo on git config --global diff external  selfL   echo off    EOF

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On Mac OS X    git difftool -t diffuse    does the job for me in the git folder  For installing diffuse  one can use port -   sudo port install diffuse

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I ve been using this bit in    gitconfig for a long time    diff      external     Dropbox source bash git-meld   With git-meld      bin bash if     DISPLAY          then     diff  2  5 else     meld  2  5 fi   But now I got tired of always using meld in graphical environment  and it s not trivial to invoke the normal diff with this setup  so I switched to this    alias      v      sh -c  if      -eq 0     then git difftool -y -t meld   else git difftool -y      fi  -    With this setup  things like this work   git v git v --staged git v -t kompare git v --staged -t tkdiff   And I still get to keep the good old git diff

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On Mac OS X    git difftool -t diffuse    does the job for me in the git folder  For installing diffuse  one can use port -   sudo port install diffuse

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For a linux version of how to configure a diff tool on git versions prior to 1 6 3  1 6 3 added difftool to git  this is a great concise tutorial   in brief   Step 1  add this to your  gitconfig   diff    external   git diff wrapper  pager    diff     Step 2  create a file named git diff wrapper  put it somewhere in your  PATH     bin sh  vimdiff   2    5

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If you re on a Mac and have XCode  then you have FileMerge installed  The terminal command is opendiff  so you can just do git difftool -t opendiff

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After looking at some other external diff tools  I found that the diff view in IntelliJ IDEA  and Android Studio  is the best one for me  Step 1 - setup IntelliJ IDEA to be run from the command line If you want to use IntelliJ IDEA as your diff tool you should first setup IntelliJ IDEA to be run from the command line following the instructions here  On macOS or UNIX   Make sure IntelliJ IDEA is running  On the main menu  choose Tools   Create Command-line Launcher  The dialog box Create Launcher Script opens  with the suggested path and name of the launcher script  You can accept default  or specify your own path  Make notice of it  as you ll need it later  Outside of IntelliJ IDEA  add the path and name of the launcher script to your path   On Windows   Specify the location of the IntelliJ IDEA executable in the Path system environment variable  In this case  you will be able to invoke the IntelliJ IDEA executable and other IntelliJ IDEA commands from any directory   Step 2 - configure git to use IntelliJ IDEA as the difftool Following the instructions on this blog post  Bash export INTELLIJ HOME  Applications IntelliJ  IDEA  CE app Contents MacOS PATH  IDEA HOME  PATH  Fish set INTELLIJ HOME  Applications IntelliJ  IDEA  CE app Contents MacOS set PATH  INTELLIJ HOME  PATH  Now add the following to your git config   merge     tool   intellij  mergetool  quot intellij quot      cmd   idea merge   cd   dirname  quot  LOCAL quot    amp  amp  pwd    basename  quot  LOCAL quot     cd   dirname  quot  REMOTE quot    amp  amp  pwd    basename  quot  REMOTE quot     cd   dirname  quot  BASE quot    amp  amp  pwd    basename  quot  BASE quot     cd   dirname  quot  MERGED quot    amp  amp  pwd    basename  quot  MERGED quot      trustExitCode   true  diff     tool   intellij  difftool  quot intellij quot      cmd   idea diff   cd   dirname  quot  LOCAL quot    amp  amp  pwd    basename  quot  LOCAL quot     cd   dirname  quot  REMOTE quot    amp  amp  pwd    basename  quot  REMOTE quot    You can try it out with git difftool or git difftool HEAD 1

User · Answer

You may want to try out xd http   github com jiqingtang xd  which is GUI wrapper for GIT SVN diff  It is NOT a diff tool itself  You run xd when you want to run git diff or svn diff and it will show you a list of files  a preview window and you can launch any diff tool you like  including tkdiff  xxdiff  gvimdiff  emacs ediff   xemacs ediff   meld  diffuse  kompare and kdiff3  You can also run any custom tool   Unfortunately the tool doesn t support Windows   Disclosure  I am the author of this tool

User · Answer

Solution for Windows msys git After reading the answers  I discovered a simpler way that involves changing only one file   Create a batch file to invoke your diff program  with argument 2 and 5  This file must be somewhere in your path   If you don t know where that is  put it in c  windows   Call it  for example   quot gitdiff bat quot   Mine is   echo off REM This is gitdiff bat  quot C  Program Files WinMerge WinMergeU exe quot   2  5   Set the environment variable to point to your batch file  For example GIT EXTERNAL DIFF gitdiff bat  Or through powershell by typing git config --global diff external gitdiff bat  It is important to not use quotes  or specify any path information  otherwise it won t work  That s why gitdiff bat must be in your path    Now when you type  quot git diff quot   it will invoke your external diff viewer

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Introduction  For reference I d like to include my variation on VonC s answer  Keep in mind that I am using the MSys version of Git  1 6 0 2 at this time  with modified PATH  and running Git itself from Powershell  or cmd exe   not the Bash shell   I introduced a new command  gitdiff  Running this command temporarily redirects git diff to use a visual diff program of your choice  as opposed to VonC s solution that does it permanently   This allows me to have both the default Git diff functionality  git diff  as well as visual diff functionality  gitdiff   Both commands take the same parameters  so for example to visually diff changes in a particular file you can type  gitdiff path file txt   Setup  Note that  GitInstall is used as a placeholder for the directory where Git is installed    Create a new file   GitInstall cmd gitdiff cmd   echo off setlocal for  F  delims     I in     dp0     do  set path    fI bin    fI mingw bin  PATH  if   HOME        set HOME  USERPROFILE  set GIT EXTERNAL DIFF git-diff-visual cmd set GIT PAGER cat git diff    endlocal  Create a new file   GitInstall bin git-diff-visual cmd  replacing  visual diff exe  placeholder with full path to the diff program of your choice    echo off rem diff is called by git with 7 parameters  rem path old-file old-hex old-mode new-file new-hex new-mode echo Diffing   5    visual diff exe     2    5  exit 0  You re now done  Running gitdiff from within a Git repository should now invoke your visual diff program for every file that was changed

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Since git version 1 6 3 there is  git difftool  which you can configure to use your favorite graphical diff tool   Currently supported out-of-the-box are kdiff3  kompare  tkdiff  meld  xxdiff  emerge  vimdiff  gvimdiff  ecmerge  diffuse and opendiff  if the tool you want to use isn t on this list  you can always use  difftool  lt tool gt  cmd  configuration option    git difftool  accepts the same options as  git diff

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In the spirit of answering questions that are somewhat different than asked   Try this solution     meld my project using git   Meld understands git and provides navigating around the recent changes

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I have one addition to this   I like to regularly use a diff app that isn t supported as one of the default tools  e g  kaleidoscope   via   git difftool -t   I also like to have the default diff just be the regular command line  so setting the GIT EXTERNAL DIFF variable isn t an option   You can use an arbitrary diff app as a one-off with this command   git difftool --extcmd  usr bin ksdiff   It just passes the 2 files to the command you specify  so you probably don t need a wrapper either

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Since Git1 6 3  you can use the git difftool script  see my answer below     May be this article will help you  Here are the best parts   There are two different ways to specify an external diff tool    The first is the method you used  by setting the GIT EXTERNAL DIFF variable  However  the variable is supposed to point to the full path of the executable  Moreover  the executable specified by GIT EXTERNAL DIFF will be called with a fixed set of 7 arguments   path old-file old-hex old-mode new-file new-hex new-mode   As most diff tools will require a different order  and only some  of the arguments  you will most likely have to specify a wrapper script instead  which in turn calls the real diff tool   The second method  which I prefer  is to configure the external diff tool via  git config   Here is what I did   1  Create a wrapper script  git-diff-wrapper sh  which contains something like  -- gt 8- snip --    bin sh    diff is called by git with 7 parameters    path old-file old-hex old-mode new-file new-hex new-mode    lt path to diff executable gt     2    5    cat --8 lt - snap --   As you can see  only the second   old-file   and fifth   new-file   arguments will be passed to the diff tool   2  Type    git config --global diff external  lt path to wrapper script gt    at the command prompt  replacing  with the path to  git-diff-wrapper sh   so your    gitconfig contains  -- gt 8- snip --  diff      external    lt path to wrapper script gt  --8 lt - snap --   Be sure to use the correct syntax to specify the paths to the wrapper script and diff tool  i e  use forward slashed instead of backslashes  In my case  I have   diff      external     c  Documents and Settings sschuber git-diff-wrapper sh     in  gitconfig and   d  Program Files Beyond Compare 3 BCompare exe    2    5    cat   in the wrapper script  Mind the trailing  cat     I suppose the    cat  is needed only for some programs which may not return a proper or consistent return status  You might want to try without the trailing cat if your diff tool has explicit return status    Diomidis Spinellis adds in the comments       The cat command is required  because diff 1   by default exits with an error code if the files differ    Git expects the external diff program to exit with an error code only if an actual error occurred  e g  if it run out of memory    By piping the output of git to cat the non-zero error code is masked    More efficiently  the program could just run exit with and argument of 0       That  the article quoted above  is the theory for external tool defined through config file  not through environment variable   In practice  still for config file definition of external tool   you can refer to    How do I setup DiffMerge with msysgit   gitk  which illustrates the concrete settings of DiffMerge and WinMerge for MsysGit and gitk How can I set up an editor to work with Git on Windows  for the definition of Notepad   as an external editor

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If you re not one for the command line then if you install tortoise git you can right click on a file to get a tortoisegit submenu with the  Diff later  option   When you select this on the first file you can then right click on the second file  go to the tortoisegit submenu and select  Diff with   yourfilehere    This will give the tortoisegitmerge gui for the result

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Introduction  For reference I d like to include my variation on VonC s answer  Keep in mind that I am using the MSys version of Git  1 6 0 2 at this time  with modified PATH  and running Git itself from Powershell  or cmd exe   not the Bash shell   I introduced a new command  gitdiff  Running this command temporarily redirects git diff to use a visual diff program of your choice  as opposed to VonC s solution that does it permanently   This allows me to have both the default Git diff functionality  git diff  as well as visual diff functionality  gitdiff   Both commands take the same parameters  so for example to visually diff changes in a particular file you can type  gitdiff path file txt   Setup  Note that  GitInstall is used as a placeholder for the directory where Git is installed    Create a new file   GitInstall cmd gitdiff cmd   echo off setlocal for  F  delims     I in     dp0     do  set path    fI bin    fI mingw bin  PATH  if   HOME        set HOME  USERPROFILE  set GIT EXTERNAL DIFF git-diff-visual cmd set GIT PAGER cat git diff    endlocal  Create a new file   GitInstall bin git-diff-visual cmd  replacing  visual diff exe  placeholder with full path to the diff program of your choice    echo off rem diff is called by git with 7 parameters  rem path old-file old-hex old-mode new-file new-hex new-mode echo Diffing   5    visual diff exe     2    5  exit 0  You re now done  Running gitdiff from within a Git repository should now invoke your visual diff program for every file that was changed

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For a linux version of how to configure a diff tool on git versions prior to 1 6 3  1 6 3 added difftool to git  this is a great concise tutorial   in brief   Step 1  add this to your  gitconfig   diff    external   git diff wrapper  pager    diff     Step 2  create a file named git diff wrapper  put it somewhere in your  PATH     bin sh  vimdiff   2    5

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you can use git difftool   for example if you have meld  you can edit the branchs master and devel by   git config --global diff external meld git difftool master  devel

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Building on VonC s answer to deal with file removals and additions  use the following commands and scripts    gt  git config --global diff tool winmerge  gt  git config --global difftool winmerge cmd  winmerge sh    LOCAL      REMOTE      BASE     gt  git config --global difftool prompt false   Which is the same as putting this in your global  gitconfig    diff      tool   winmerge  difftool  winmerge       cmd   winmerge bat   LOCAL    REMOTE    BASE   difftool      prompt   false   Then put the following in winmerge shwhich must be on your path      bin sh NULL   dev null  if     2      NULL      then     echo  removed   3  elif     1      NULL      then     echo  added   3  else     echo  changed   3       C  Program Files  x86  WinMerge WinMergeU exe  -e -ub -dl  Base  -dr  Mine    1    2  fi

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Building on VonC s answer to deal with file removals and additions  use the following commands and scripts    gt  git config --global diff tool winmerge  gt  git config --global difftool winmerge cmd  winmerge sh    LOCAL      REMOTE      BASE     gt  git config --global difftool prompt false   Which is the same as putting this in your global  gitconfig    diff      tool   winmerge  difftool  winmerge       cmd   winmerge bat   LOCAL    REMOTE    BASE   difftool      prompt   false   Then put the following in winmerge shwhich must be on your path      bin sh NULL   dev null  if     2      NULL      then     echo  removed   3  elif     1      NULL      then     echo  added   3  else     echo  changed   3       C  Program Files  x86  WinMerge WinMergeU exe  -e -ub -dl  Base  -dr  Mine    1    2  fi

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Since Git1 6 3  you can use the git difftool script  see my answer below     May be this article will help you  Here are the best parts   There are two different ways to specify an external diff tool    The first is the method you used  by setting the GIT EXTERNAL DIFF variable  However  the variable is supposed to point to the full path of the executable  Moreover  the executable specified by GIT EXTERNAL DIFF will be called with a fixed set of 7 arguments   path old-file old-hex old-mode new-file new-hex new-mode   As most diff tools will require a different order  and only some  of the arguments  you will most likely have to specify a wrapper script instead  which in turn calls the real diff tool   The second method  which I prefer  is to configure the external diff tool via  git config   Here is what I did   1  Create a wrapper script  git-diff-wrapper sh  which contains something like  -- gt 8- snip --    bin sh    diff is called by git with 7 parameters    path old-file old-hex old-mode new-file new-hex new-mode    lt path to diff executable gt     2    5    cat --8 lt - snap --   As you can see  only the second   old-file   and fifth   new-file   arguments will be passed to the diff tool   2  Type    git config --global diff external  lt path to wrapper script gt    at the command prompt  replacing  with the path to  git-diff-wrapper sh   so your    gitconfig contains  -- gt 8- snip --  diff      external    lt path to wrapper script gt  --8 lt - snap --   Be sure to use the correct syntax to specify the paths to the wrapper script and diff tool  i e  use forward slashed instead of backslashes  In my case  I have   diff      external     c  Documents and Settings sschuber git-diff-wrapper sh     in  gitconfig and   d  Program Files Beyond Compare 3 BCompare exe    2    5    cat   in the wrapper script  Mind the trailing  cat     I suppose the    cat  is needed only for some programs which may not return a proper or consistent return status  You might want to try without the trailing cat if your diff tool has explicit return status    Diomidis Spinellis adds in the comments       The cat command is required  because diff 1   by default exits with an error code if the files differ    Git expects the external diff program to exit with an error code only if an actual error occurred  e g  if it run out of memory    By piping the output of git to cat the non-zero error code is masked    More efficiently  the program could just run exit with and argument of 0       That  the article quoted above  is the theory for external tool defined through config file  not through environment variable   In practice  still for config file definition of external tool   you can refer to    How do I setup DiffMerge with msysgit   gitk  which illustrates the concrete settings of DiffMerge and WinMerge for MsysGit and gitk How can I set up an editor to work with Git on Windows  for the definition of Notepad   as an external editor

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Solution for Windows msys git After reading the answers  I discovered a simpler way that involves changing only one file   Create a batch file to invoke your diff program  with argument 2 and 5  This file must be somewhere in your path   If you don t know where that is  put it in c  windows   Call it  for example   quot gitdiff bat quot   Mine is   echo off REM This is gitdiff bat  quot C  Program Files WinMerge WinMergeU exe quot   2  5   Set the environment variable to point to your batch file  For example GIT EXTERNAL DIFF gitdiff bat  Or through powershell by typing git config --global diff external gitdiff bat  It is important to not use quotes  or specify any path information  otherwise it won t work  That s why gitdiff bat must be in your path    Now when you type  quot git diff quot   it will invoke your external diff viewer

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I have one addition to this   I like to regularly use a diff app that isn t supported as one of the default tools  e g  kaleidoscope   via   git difftool -t   I also like to have the default diff just be the regular command line  so setting the GIT EXTERNAL DIFF variable isn t an option   You can use an arbitrary diff app as a one-off with this command   git difftool --extcmd  usr bin ksdiff   It just passes the 2 files to the command you specify  so you probably don t need a wrapper either

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A short summary of the above great answers   git difftool --tool-help git config --global diff tool  lt chosen tool gt  git config --global --add difftool prompt false   Then use it by typing  optionally specifying file name as well    git difftool

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Introduction  For reference I d like to include my variation on VonC s answer  Keep in mind that I am using the MSys version of Git  1 6 0 2 at this time  with modified PATH  and running Git itself from Powershell  or cmd exe   not the Bash shell   I introduced a new command  gitdiff  Running this command temporarily redirects git diff to use a visual diff program of your choice  as opposed to VonC s solution that does it permanently   This allows me to have both the default Git diff functionality  git diff  as well as visual diff functionality  gitdiff   Both commands take the same parameters  so for example to visually diff changes in a particular file you can type  gitdiff path file txt   Setup  Note that  GitInstall is used as a placeholder for the directory where Git is installed    Create a new file   GitInstall cmd gitdiff cmd   echo off setlocal for  F  delims     I in     dp0     do  set path    fI bin    fI mingw bin  PATH  if   HOME        set HOME  USERPROFILE  set GIT EXTERNAL DIFF git-diff-visual cmd set GIT PAGER cat git diff    endlocal  Create a new file   GitInstall bin git-diff-visual cmd  replacing  visual diff exe  placeholder with full path to the diff program of your choice    echo off rem diff is called by git with 7 parameters  rem path old-file old-hex old-mode new-file new-hex new-mode echo Diffing   5    visual diff exe     2    5  exit 0  You re now done  Running gitdiff from within a Git repository should now invoke your visual diff program for every file that was changed

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I ve been using this bit in    gitconfig for a long time    diff      external     Dropbox source bash git-meld   With git-meld      bin bash if     DISPLAY          then     diff  2  5 else     meld  2  5 fi   But now I got tired of always using meld in graphical environment  and it s not trivial to invoke the normal diff with this setup  so I switched to this    alias      v      sh -c  if      -eq 0     then git difftool -y -t meld   else git difftool -y      fi  -    With this setup  things like this work   git v git v --staged git v -t kompare git v --staged -t tkdiff   And I still get to keep the good old git diff

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Introduction  For reference I d like to include my variation on VonC s answer  Keep in mind that I am using the MSys version of Git  1 6 0 2 at this time  with modified PATH  and running Git itself from Powershell  or cmd exe   not the Bash shell   I introduced a new command  gitdiff  Running this command temporarily redirects git diff to use a visual diff program of your choice  as opposed to VonC s solution that does it permanently   This allows me to have both the default Git diff functionality  git diff  as well as visual diff functionality  gitdiff   Both commands take the same parameters  so for example to visually diff changes in a particular file you can type  gitdiff path file txt   Setup  Note that  GitInstall is used as a placeholder for the directory where Git is installed    Create a new file   GitInstall cmd gitdiff cmd   echo off setlocal for  F  delims     I in     dp0     do  set path    fI bin    fI mingw bin  PATH  if   HOME        set HOME  USERPROFILE  set GIT EXTERNAL DIFF git-diff-visual cmd set GIT PAGER cat git diff    endlocal  Create a new file   GitInstall bin git-diff-visual cmd  replacing  visual diff exe  placeholder with full path to the diff program of your choice    echo off rem diff is called by git with 7 parameters  rem path old-file old-hex old-mode new-file new-hex new-mode echo Diffing   5    visual diff exe     2    5  exit 0  You re now done  Running gitdiff from within a Git repository should now invoke your visual diff program for every file that was changed

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If you happen to already have a diff tool associated with filetypes  say  because you installed TortoiseSVN which comes with a diff viewer  you could just pipe the regular git diff output to a  temp  file  then just open that file directly without needing to know anything about the viewer   git diff  gt     temp diff   amp  amp  start    temp diff    Setting it as a global alias works even better  git what   alias      what     f     git diff  gt     temp diff   amp  amp  start    temp diff      f

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Since Git1 6 3  you can use the git difftool script  see my answer below     May be this article will help you  Here are the best parts   There are two different ways to specify an external diff tool    The first is the method you used  by setting the GIT EXTERNAL DIFF variable  However  the variable is supposed to point to the full path of the executable  Moreover  the executable specified by GIT EXTERNAL DIFF will be called with a fixed set of 7 arguments   path old-file old-hex old-mode new-file new-hex new-mode   As most diff tools will require a different order  and only some  of the arguments  you will most likely have to specify a wrapper script instead  which in turn calls the real diff tool   The second method  which I prefer  is to configure the external diff tool via  git config   Here is what I did   1  Create a wrapper script  git-diff-wrapper sh  which contains something like  -- gt 8- snip --    bin sh    diff is called by git with 7 parameters    path old-file old-hex old-mode new-file new-hex new-mode    lt path to diff executable gt     2    5    cat --8 lt - snap --   As you can see  only the second   old-file   and fifth   new-file   arguments will be passed to the diff tool   2  Type    git config --global diff external  lt path to wrapper script gt    at the command prompt  replacing  with the path to  git-diff-wrapper sh   so your    gitconfig contains  -- gt 8- snip --  diff      external    lt path to wrapper script gt  --8 lt - snap --   Be sure to use the correct syntax to specify the paths to the wrapper script and diff tool  i e  use forward slashed instead of backslashes  In my case  I have   diff      external     c  Documents and Settings sschuber git-diff-wrapper sh     in  gitconfig and   d  Program Files Beyond Compare 3 BCompare exe    2    5    cat   in the wrapper script  Mind the trailing  cat     I suppose the    cat  is needed only for some programs which may not return a proper or consistent return status  You might want to try without the trailing cat if your diff tool has explicit return status    Diomidis Spinellis adds in the comments       The cat command is required  because diff 1   by default exits with an error code if the files differ    Git expects the external diff program to exit with an error code only if an actual error occurred  e g  if it run out of memory    By piping the output of git to cat the non-zero error code is masked    More efficiently  the program could just run exit with and argument of 0       That  the article quoted above  is the theory for external tool defined through config file  not through environment variable   In practice  still for config file definition of external tool   you can refer to    How do I setup DiffMerge with msysgit   gitk  which illustrates the concrete settings of DiffMerge and WinMerge for MsysGit and gitk How can I set up an editor to work with Git on Windows  for the definition of Notepad   as an external editor

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If you re not one for the command line then if you install tortoise git you can right click on a file to get a tortoisegit submenu with the  Diff later  option   When you select this on the first file you can then right click on the second file  go to the tortoisegit submenu and select  Diff with   yourfilehere    This will give the tortoisegitmerge gui for the result

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this works for me on windows 7  No need for intermediary sh scripts  contents of  gitconfig        diff        tool   kdiff3       difftool         prompt   false       difftool  kdiff3         path   C  Program Files  x86  KDiff3 kdiff3 exe       cmd     LOCAL    REMOTE

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To complete my previous  quot diff external quot  config answer above  As mentioned by Jakub  Git1 6 3 introduced git difftool  originally proposed in September 2008  USAGE   --tool tool   --commit ref   --start ref --end ref   --no-prompt   file to merge    See --extcmd in the last part of this answer   LOCAL contains the contents of the file from the starting revision and  REMOTE contains the contents of the file in the ending revision   BASE contains the contents of the file in the wor  It s basically git-mergetool modified to operate on the git index worktree  The usual use case for this script is when you have either staged or unstaged changes and you d like to see the changes in a side-by-side diff viewer  e g  xxdiff  tkdiff  etc    git difftool   lt filename gt      Another use case is when you d like to see the same information but are comparing arbitrary commits  this is the part where the revarg parsing could be better   git difftool --start HEAD  --end HEAD  --  lt filename gt     The last use case is when you d like to compare your current worktree to something other than HEAD  e g  a tag  git difftool --commit v1 0 0  --  lt filename gt     Note  since Git 2 5  git config diff tool winmerge is enough  See  quot git mergetool winmerge quot  And since Git 1 7 11  you have the option --dir-diff  in order to  to spawn external diff tools that can compare two directory hierarchies at a time after populating two temporary directories  instead of running an instance of the external tool once per a file pair   Before Git 2 5  Practical case for configuring difftool with your custom diff tool  C  myGitRepo gt git config --global diff tool winmerge C  myGitRepo gt git config --global difftool winmerge cmd  quot winmerge sh   quot  LOCAL  quot    quot  REMOTE  quot  quot  C  myGitRepo gt git config --global difftool prompt false  With winmerge sh stored in a directory part of your PATH     bin sh echo Launching WinMergeU exe   1  2  quot C  Program Files WinMerge WinMergeU exe quot  -u -e  quot  1 quot   quot  2 quot  -dl  quot Local quot  -dr  quot Remote quot   If you have another tool  kdiff3  P4Diff        create another shell script  and the appropriate difftool myDiffTool cmd config directive  Then you can easily switch tools with the diff tool config  You have also this blog entry by Dave to add other details   Or this question for the winmergeu options  The interest with this setting is the winmerge shscript  you can customize it to take into account special cases  See for instance David Marble s answer below for an example which deals with   new files in either origin or destination removed files in either origin or destination   As Kem Mason mentions in his answer  you can also avoid any wrapper by using the --extcmd option  --extcmd  lt command gt    Specify a custom command for viewing diffs  git-difftool ignores the configured defaults and runs  command  LOCAL  REMOTE when this option is specified   For instance  this is how gitk is able to run use any diff tool

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you can use git difftool   for example if you have meld  you can edit the branchs master and devel by   git config --global diff external meld git difftool master  devel

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If you re doing this through cygwin  you may need to use cygpath     git config difftool bc3 cmd  git-diff-bcomp-wrapper sh   LOCAL   REMOTE    cat git-diff-bcomp-wrapper sh    bin sh  c  Program Files  x86  Beyond Compare 3 BComp exe   cygpath -w  1   cygpath -w  2

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If you re doing this through cygwin  you may need to use cygpath     git config difftool bc3 cmd  git-diff-bcomp-wrapper sh   LOCAL   REMOTE    cat git-diff-bcomp-wrapper sh    bin sh  c  Program Files  x86  Beyond Compare 3 BComp exe   cygpath -w  1   cygpath -w  2

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If you re on a Mac and have XCode  then you have FileMerge installed  The terminal command is opendiff  so you can just do git difftool -t opendiff

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I tried the fancy stuff here  with tkdiff  and nothing worked for me   So I wrote the following script  tkgitdiff   It does what I need it to do     cat tkgitdiff    bin sh      tkdiff for git    Gives you the diff between HEAD and the current state of your file     newfile  1 git diff HEAD --  newfile  gt   tmp patch dat cp  newfile  tmp savedPWD  PWD cd  tmp patch -R  newfile  lt  patch dat cd  savedPWD tkdiff  tmp  newfile  newfile

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With new git difftool  its as simple as adding this to your  gitconfig file    diff      tool   any-name  difftool  any-name       cmd      C  path to my ext diff exe      LOCAL      REMOTE      Optionally  also add    difftool      prompt   false   Also check out diffall  a simple script I wrote to extend the annoying  IMO  default diff behaviour of opening each in serial   Global  gitconfig on Windows is in  USERPROFILE   gitconfig

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I use kompare on ubuntu   sudo apt-get install kompare   To compare two branches   git difftool -t kompare  lt my branch gt  master

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If you happen to already have a diff tool associated with filetypes  say  because you installed TortoiseSVN which comes with a diff viewer  you could just pipe the regular git diff output to a  temp  file  then just open that file directly without needing to know anything about the viewer   git diff  gt     temp diff   amp  amp  start    temp diff    Setting it as a global alias works even better  git what   alias      what     f     git diff  gt     temp diff   amp  amp  start    temp diff      f

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Install meld     apt-get install meld   Then choose that as difftool     git config --global diff tool meld   If tou want to run it on console type      git difftool   If you want to use graphic mode type      git mergetool   And the output would be     git mergetool  will now attempt to use one of the following tools   meld opendiff kdiff3 tkdiff xxdiff tortoisemerge gvimdiff diffuse  diffmerge ecmerge p4merge araxis bc3 codecompare emerge vimdiff  Merging   www css style css  www js controllers js   Normal merge conflict for  www css style css       local   modified file     remote   modified file  Hit return to start merge resolution tool  meld     So just press enter to use meld default   this would open graphic mode  make the magic save and press that that resolve the merge  That s all

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After looking at some other external diff tools  I found that the diff view in IntelliJ IDEA  and Android Studio  is the best one for me  Step 1 - setup IntelliJ IDEA to be run from the command line If you want to use IntelliJ IDEA as your diff tool you should first setup IntelliJ IDEA to be run from the command line following the instructions here  On macOS or UNIX   Make sure IntelliJ IDEA is running  On the main menu  choose Tools   Create Command-line Launcher  The dialog box Create Launcher Script opens  with the suggested path and name of the launcher script  You can accept default  or specify your own path  Make notice of it  as you ll need it later  Outside of IntelliJ IDEA  add the path and name of the launcher script to your path   On Windows   Specify the location of the IntelliJ IDEA executable in the Path system environment variable  In this case  you will be able to invoke the IntelliJ IDEA executable and other IntelliJ IDEA commands from any directory   Step 2 - configure git to use IntelliJ IDEA as the difftool Following the instructions on this blog post  Bash export INTELLIJ HOME  Applications IntelliJ  IDEA  CE app Contents MacOS PATH  IDEA HOME  PATH  Fish set INTELLIJ HOME  Applications IntelliJ  IDEA  CE app Contents MacOS set PATH  INTELLIJ HOME  PATH  Now add the following to your git config   merge     tool   intellij  mergetool  quot intellij quot      cmd   idea merge   cd   dirname  quot  LOCAL quot    amp  amp  pwd    basename  quot  LOCAL quot     cd   dirname  quot  REMOTE quot    amp  amp  pwd    basename  quot  REMOTE quot     cd   dirname  quot  BASE quot    amp  amp  pwd    basename  quot  BASE quot     cd   dirname  quot  MERGED quot    amp  amp  pwd    basename  quot  MERGED quot      trustExitCode   true  diff     tool   intellij  difftool  quot intellij quot      cmd   idea diff   cd   dirname  quot  LOCAL quot    amp  amp  pwd    basename  quot  LOCAL quot     cd   dirname  quot  REMOTE quot    amp  amp  pwd    basename  quot  REMOTE quot    You can try it out with git difftool or git difftool HEAD 1

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A short summary of the above great answers   git difftool --tool-help git config --global diff tool  lt chosen tool gt  git config --global --add difftool prompt false   Then use it by typing  optionally specifying file name as well    git difftool

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Install meld     apt-get install meld   Then choose that as difftool     git config --global diff tool meld   If tou want to run it on console type      git difftool   If you want to use graphic mode type      git mergetool   And the output would be     git mergetool  will now attempt to use one of the following tools   meld opendiff kdiff3 tkdiff xxdiff tortoisemerge gvimdiff diffuse  diffmerge ecmerge p4merge araxis bc3 codecompare emerge vimdiff  Merging   www css style css  www js controllers js   Normal merge conflict for  www css style css       local   modified file     remote   modified file  Hit return to start merge resolution tool  meld     So just press enter to use meld default   this would open graphic mode  make the magic save and press that that resolve the merge  That s all

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Since Git1 6 3  you can use the git difftool script  see my answer below     May be this article will help you  Here are the best parts   There are two different ways to specify an external diff tool    The first is the method you used  by setting the GIT EXTERNAL DIFF variable  However  the variable is supposed to point to the full path of the executable  Moreover  the executable specified by GIT EXTERNAL DIFF will be called with a fixed set of 7 arguments   path old-file old-hex old-mode new-file new-hex new-mode   As most diff tools will require a different order  and only some  of the arguments  you will most likely have to specify a wrapper script instead  which in turn calls the real diff tool   The second method  which I prefer  is to configure the external diff tool via  git config   Here is what I did   1  Create a wrapper script  git-diff-wrapper sh  which contains something like  -- gt 8- snip --    bin sh    diff is called by git with 7 parameters    path old-file old-hex old-mode new-file new-hex new-mode    lt path to diff executable gt     2    5    cat --8 lt - snap --   As you can see  only the second   old-file   and fifth   new-file   arguments will be passed to the diff tool   2  Type    git config --global diff external  lt path to wrapper script gt    at the command prompt  replacing  with the path to  git-diff-wrapper sh   so your    gitconfig contains  -- gt 8- snip --  diff      external    lt path to wrapper script gt  --8 lt - snap --   Be sure to use the correct syntax to specify the paths to the wrapper script and diff tool  i e  use forward slashed instead of backslashes  In my case  I have   diff      external     c  Documents and Settings sschuber git-diff-wrapper sh     in  gitconfig and   d  Program Files Beyond Compare 3 BCompare exe    2    5    cat   in the wrapper script  Mind the trailing  cat     I suppose the    cat  is needed only for some programs which may not return a proper or consistent return status  You might want to try without the trailing cat if your diff tool has explicit return status    Diomidis Spinellis adds in the comments       The cat command is required  because diff 1   by default exits with an error code if the files differ    Git expects the external diff program to exit with an error code only if an actual error occurred  e g  if it run out of memory    By piping the output of git to cat the non-zero error code is masked    More efficiently  the program could just run exit with and argument of 0       That  the article quoted above  is the theory for external tool defined through config file  not through environment variable   In practice  still for config file definition of external tool   you can refer to    How do I setup DiffMerge with msysgit   gitk  which illustrates the concrete settings of DiffMerge and WinMerge for MsysGit and gitk How can I set up an editor to work with Git on Windows  for the definition of Notepad   as an external editor

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I tried the fancy stuff here  with tkdiff  and nothing worked for me   So I wrote the following script  tkgitdiff   It does what I need it to do     cat tkgitdiff    bin sh      tkdiff for git    Gives you the diff between HEAD and the current state of your file     newfile  1 git diff HEAD --  newfile  gt   tmp patch dat cp  newfile  tmp savedPWD  PWD cd  tmp patch -R  newfile  lt  patch dat cd  savedPWD tkdiff  tmp  newfile  newfile

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The following can be gleaned from the other answers here  but for me it s difficult   too much information   so here s the  just type it in  answer for tkdiff   git difftool --tool tkdiff  lt path to the file to be diffed gt    You can substitute the executable name of your favorite diffing tool for tkdiff   As long as  e g  tkdiff    or your favorite diffing tool  is in your PATH  it will be launched

[git] How do I view 'git diff' output with my preferred diff tool/ viewer?

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