git difftool. It basically does two things for you:
- Checkout the versions of the file to compare
- Fire up your diff program to show you/highlight the differences
All you need to do is specify the file and the versions you want to compare.
Configuration
git difftool is part of the git installation. However, it needs to know which diff program you want to use when calling git difftool. You can specify this by adding the following snippet to your ~/.gitconfig:
[diff] tool = MY-DIFF-TOOL
where MY-DIFF-TOOL could be vimdiff, kdiff3, or similar (ensure the tool you specify is installed and available in the PATH on your machine). Now git difftool should be ready for usage:
user@machine:~$ git difftool -h
usage: git difftool [-t|--tool=] [--tool-help] [-x|--extcmd=] [-g|--gui] [--no-gui] [--prompt] [-y|--no-prompt] [-d|--dir-diff] ['git diff' options]
Usage
git difftool has a simple call syntax (in fact the same as git diff). The command you might want to compare files might be similar to this:
git difftool COMMIT1 COMMIT2 FILE
If you use
--
as COMMIT1 and leave out COMMIT2 you will see the differences between the file in its current, possibly unstaged/uncommited stage and its last commit. If you specify a hash for COMMIT1 and use
--
as COMMIT2 you will see the differences of the current file to the specified commit instead. If you specify hashes for both COMMIT1 and COMMIT2 you will see the differences between those two versions of the file.