From: Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de>
To: norm@dad.org
Cc: git@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Question: Getting 'git diff' to generate /usr/bin/diff output
Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2016 09:46:51 +0200 (CEST) [thread overview]
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.2.20.1607170942580.28832@virtualbox> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <578a9d5b.xL1egXSTCv+mjhAT%perryh@pluto.rain.com>
Hi,
[Perry, my mailer could not find your MX record, so I am sorry I had to
drop you from the explicit To:...]
On Sat, 16 Jul 2016, Perry Hutchison wrote:
> norm@dad.org wrote:
>
> > Would some kind soul be willing to tell me if there is a way to
> > do that, short of making a backup copy of the relevant file, and
> > then doing 'git checkout'. Maybe the '--ext-diff' argument to
> > 'git diff' will do that, but I can't figure out how to use it.
> > ...
> > git version: 2.5.1.454.g1616360
>
> 'git cat' would be simpler than making a backup and using 'git checkout',
> but for this use case there's a better way even than that.
$ git cat
git: 'cat' is not a git command. See 'git --help'.
;-)
You probably meant `git cat-file blob <SHA-1>`.
> Google is your friend when you can't figure something out from (or
> find the right part of) a program's own documentation. A search for
>
> git "external diff program"
>
> (including the quotes) found several references.
>
> One possible complication: It's likely that the command parameters
> which git passes to an external diff program are not exactly what
> /usr/bin/diff requires. The solution to that sort of problem is to
> write a very short executable script that rearranges the parameters
> as needed, and specify that script (instead of /usr/bin/diff itself)
> as the external diff program.
To spell it out, you probably referred to the --ext-diff option:
https://github.com/git/git/blob/v2.9.2/Documentation/diff-options.txt#L528-L531
This option can be used with any diff-producing Git command, but it
requires a .gitattribute setting together with the corresponding
diff.external setting in the config.
A better method might be to use the `git difftool` command, e.g.
git difftool -x diff
You can also inspect the diff of a commit, using the ^! suffix, e.g.
git difftool -x diff origin/master~3^!
If you want to avoid the prompt and get the complete diff for all files in
one go, you will have to write a small script as indicated, e.g.
printf '#!/bin/sh\n\n/usr/bin/diff -r "$@"\n' >my-diff.sh
chmod a+x my-diff.sh
git difftool -d -x $PWD/my-diff.sh HEAD^!
I did write all of this in the mail program, so I highly recommend reading
the man page of the difftool e.g. to understand the meaning of the -d
option, so that you can fix any problems with my examples yourself.
Ciao,
Johannes
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2016-07-17 7:47 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 12+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2016-07-16 19:12 Question: Getting 'git diff' to generate /usr/bin/diff output norm
2016-07-16 20:47 ` Perry Hutchison
2016-07-17 7:46 ` Johannes Schindelin [this message]
2016-07-19 15:20 ` norm
2016-07-17 12:18 ` René Scharfe
2016-07-17 17:26 ` norm
2016-07-18 7:23 ` Johannes Schindelin
2016-07-18 9:19 ` [PATCH] pager: disable color when pager is "more" Eric Wong
2016-07-18 13:16 ` Jeff King
2016-07-18 17:19 ` Junio C Hamano
2016-07-18 18:58 ` Jeff King
2016-07-19 2:37 ` Eric Wong
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