Reputation:

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

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?

Upvotes: 275

Answers (20)

Ashu Sahu

Reputation: 601

Use diff2html-cli to export side by side diff to HTML file and view it there.

Install

npm install -g diff2html-cli

Use

git diff HEAD | diff2html -i stdin -s side -F diff.html -o stdout

Upvotes: 0

Tilo

Reputation: 33722

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

ymattw's answer is also pretty neat, using ydiff

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

Upvotes: 278

Ahmad Ismail

Reputation: 13842

There are multiple solutions:

Solution 1 : Meld :

Install meld (in ubuntu I used sudo apt install meld). Then configure it like bellow.

git config --global diff.tool meld
git config --global difftool.meld.path "$(which meld)"
git config --global difftool.prompt false

git config --global merge.tool meld
git config --global mergetool.meld.path "$(which meld)"

Solution 2 : Delta :

If you decide to use cli, then install delta. The config I use is:

git config --global core.pager 'delta'
git config --global interactive.diffFilter 'delta --color-only'
git config --global delta.side-by-side true
git config --global delta.line-numbers true
git config --global delta.syntax-theme 'Solarized (dark)'

Solution 3 : Melt :

You can also use Melt. It's syntax highlighting is done with bat. This is also a cli tool.

Upvotes: 2

Wong Jia Hau

Reputation: 3059

Use delta.

In your gitconfig file (usually ~/.gitconfig or ~/.config/git/config),

add:

[core]
  pager = delta --light --side-by-side

Upvotes: 5

starfry

Reputation: 9943

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^

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 "icdiff --cols $(tput cols)" "${@}" | less --raw-control-chars

Upvotes: 35

Shrey

Reputation: 882

I recently implemented a tool that does exactly this: https://github.com/banga/git-split-diffs

Here's how to use it:

npm install -g git-split-diffs

git config --global core.pager "git-split-diffs --color | less -RFX"

And this is how it looks in your terminal (with the default theme):

As you can see, it also supports syntax highlighting and highlighting changed words within lines

Upvotes: 16

nomadbyte

Reputation: 21

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)

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

Upvotes: 2

ymattw

Reputation: 1179

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.

Upvotes: 61

Walker Hale IV

Reputation: 3328

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.

Upvotes: 16

Eric

Reputation: 29

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.

Upvotes: 2

Holger Brandl

Reputation: 11192

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

Upvotes: 3

Mike

Reputation: 407

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.

Upvotes: 4

mb14

Reputation: 22596

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.

Upvotes: 98

Thomas Mellman

Reputation: 21

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

Upvotes: 2

Jon Carter

Reputation: 3406

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

Upvotes: 1

Jose Alban

Reputation: 7926

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

Upvotes: 6