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

问题:

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?

回答1:

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:

1. setting the GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF and the GIT_DIFF_OPTS environment variables.
2. 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)

1. 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
   

2. Using git config

   use "git config" to define where your wrapper script can be found:

   git config --global diff.external ~/scripts/my_diff.sh
   

3. 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

回答2:

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 '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

回答3:

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.

回答4:

ydiff (formerly called cdiff) can display side by side, incremental, and colorful diff.

With it, you can use:

git difftool -y -x "ydiff -s"

This will launch ydiff in side-by-side display mode for each of the files with differences.

See the ydiff GitHub repository page for detail and demo.

回答5:

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.

回答6:

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)

回答7:

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.

回答8:

export GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF='meld $2 $5; echo >/dev/null'

then simply:

git diff

回答9:

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.

回答10:

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

回答11:

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$width \$2 \$5; echo >/dev/null" git diff "$@"
}

回答12:

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.

回答13:

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.

回答14:

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

回答15:

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

回答16:

If you are on a Mac, GitUp http://gitup.co/ is quite a good choice.