graphical diff

I think it would be really helpful (especially for newbies like me) to have an option like

git diff --gui [revisions] <singe path spec>

to fire up a graphical diff viewer (similar to what git-mergetool does).

Another good place to start a graphical diff from is probably gitk from a context-menu for the changed files in the lower right pane.

Thoughts?

best regards

  Ray

söndag 18 mars 2007 14:16 skrev Raimund Bauer:

Fine, except it is not likely to be my favourite gui. But you don't have to wait, you can get a gui easily today.

Pipe the output to another tool. Kompare is such a tool which can take a patch and compare it. It does not have to a single file. You can diff two trees and compare. You'll need at kdesdk version 3.5.5 (or 3.5.6) or the patch in
http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=131717 for kompare to display git diffs.

git diff HEAD^..HEAD | kompare -

As for other gui's I don't know which ones work easily out of the box.

Eclipse will soon have recursive diff mode for git. Seems to work here, so I'll probably submit it soon).

-- robin

Hi,

And how do you set _what_ gui you want? Everybody has her pet diff-viewer (mine is less, BTW).

BTW here, "kompare -" does not work as expected. It shows an empty diff. At any rate, have you tried something like "GIT_PAGER='kompare -' git diff HEAD^..HEAD"?

This reminds me that I always wanted to be able to set the pager from the command line, so I can set an alias easily:

-- snipsnap --
[PATCH] Allow setting the pager from the command line

The command git already allows piping the output into a pager with -p. Now also allow to set the pager with -p=<pager-cmd>.

With this, it is possible to make an alias of command/pager combos, like this:

	$ git config alias.showmore '-p=more show'

---
 Documentation/git.txt |    8 +++++---
 git.c                 |    7 ++++++-
 2 files changed, 11 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)

index 0b1203e..5634b30 100644
@@ -9,7 +9,7 @@ git - the stupid content tracker
 SYNOPSIS
 --------
 [verse]
-'git' [--version] [--exec-path[=GIT_EXEC_PATH]] [-p|--paginate]
+'git' [--version] [--exec-path[=GIT_EXEC_PATH]] [-p|--paginate][=<pager-cmd>]
 	[-n|--name-rev] [-t|--name-rev-by-tags] [--bare]
 	[--git-dir=GIT_DIR] [--help] COMMAND [ARGS]
 

@@ -75,8 +75,10 @@ OPTIONS
 	environment variable. If no path is given 'git' will print
 	the current setting and then exit.
 
--p|--paginate::
-	Pipe all output into 'less' (or if set, $PAGER).
+-p|--paginate[=<pager-cmd>]::
+	Pipe all output into 'less'. You can override this by
+	"=<pager-cmd>", or setting the environment variables $GIT_PAGER
+	or $PAGER (in that order).
 
 -n|--name-rev:
 	Try naming all SHA1s, and page the result (see

index fca1dfb..76b126d 100644
@@ -4,7 +4,7 @@
 #include "quote.h"
 
 const char git_usage_string[] =
-	"git [--version] [--exec-path[=GIT_EXEC_PATH]] [-p|--paginate] [--bare] [--git-dir=GIT_DIR] [--help] COMMAND [ARGS]";
+	"git [--version] [--exec-path[=GIT_EXEC_PATH]] [-p|--paginate][=pager_cmd] [--bare] [--git-dir=GIT_DIR] [--help] COMMAND [ARGS]";
 
 static void prepend_to_path(const char *dir, int len)
 {

@@ -58,6 +58,11 @@ static int handle_options(const char*** argv, int* argc)
 			}
 		} else if (!strcmp(cmd, "-p") || !strcmp(cmd, "--paginate")) {
 			setup_pager();
+		} else if (!prefixcmp(cmd, "-p=") ||
+				!prefixcmp(cmd, "--paginate=")) {
+			const char *equal = strchr(cmd, '=');
+			setenv("GIT_PAGER", equal + 1, 1);
+			setup_pager();
 		} else if (!strcmp(cmd, "-n") || !strcmp(cmd, "--name-rev"))
 			setup_name_rev_pager(0);
 		else if (!strcmp(cmd, "-t") ||

1.5.0.4.2713.g4ff1

Maybe with a git.gui config option (like merge.tool)? Or by specifying on the commandline:

git diff --gui=<my-gui-differ> ...

And <my-gui-differ> = xxdiff | kompare | tkdiff | ...

best regards

  Ray

Hi,

Have you actually looked at the patch I sent? It is more logical to say "git -p=<bla> diff ..." when the option "-p" (without "=") already exists.

Ciao,
Dscho

Hi,

I have, and I can't see your patch doing what I want. Sorry if I haven't made myself clear what I want, but I was thinking about a shortcut for something like the following example sequence:

$ git show v1.4.0:git.c > git.c.v1.4.0
$ git show v1.4.4:git.c > git.c.v1.4.4
$ tkdiff git.c.v1.4.0 git.c.v1.4.4
$ rm git.c.v1.4.0 git.c.v1.4.4

Replace tkdiff with the differ of your choice.

At least for comparing 2 single blobs that behavior should be well defined. For comparing multiple blobs, checking them out in 2 separate directories and starting the differ with the directories could work, but I'm more after the single-file case for now ... and that's also the one that should be easy to start from gitk.

If there's a way to do that by setting the pager I'll be happy to do so ;-)

best regards

  Ray

Hi,

This almost looks like a script! Why don't you make it one?

Ciao,
Dscho

Because I had hoped that someone more familiar with git and scripting than me can come up with something, that
1.) also works in the multi-file case
2.) can take all the usual object and revision specifiers that git diff takes.

And then there's gitk integration ...

But I'll take a look at it ;-)

best regards

  Ray

måndag 19 mars 2007 00:09 skrev Johannes Schindelin:

I think that's what the older kompare did. That why mentioned that you need the verson from 3.5.5, or even 3.5.6 for this to work.

Doesn't work here. Shows empty diff...

but AH, that's because of the colored-diff settings. I you have color.diff or color.status set to true neither version will work. With auto the first one will, but not the second.

-- robin

Hi,

I wonder why we still have "color.diff=true", which is wrong in almost _all_ cases (instead it should be auto).

That is to be expected... Git actually expects the pager to be just that, a pager. So you have to say

$ GIT_PAGER='kompare -' git diff --no-color HEAD^..HEAD

Hth,
Dscho

gvimdiff is pretty cool. Have a look at the archives, I asked recently how to perform this, and a few solutions came out (you need a sane shell, and the abilities to create fifos).

I'd use it everyday if a true vim/gvim explorer plugin would exist (and it's hard to code!).

Christian