pro-tips.md

Pro-tips

One-off fanciness or a specific diff-so-fancy alias

You can do also do a one-off:

git diff --color | diff-so-fancy

or configure an alias and a corresponding pager to use diff-so-fancy:

git config --global alias.dsf "diff --color"
git config --global pager.dsf "diff-so-fancy | less --tabs=4 -RFXS"

Opting-out

Sometimes you will want to bypass diff-so-fancy. Use --no-pager for that:

git --no-pager diff

Raw patches

As a shortcut for a 'normal' diff to save as a patch for emailing or later application, it may be helpful to configure an alias:

[alias]
    patch = !git --no-pager diff --no-color

which can then be used as git patch > changes.patch.

Moving around in the diff

You can pre-seed your less pager with a search pattern, so you can move between files with n/N keys:

[pager]
    diff = diff-so-fancy | less --tabs=4 -RFXS --pattern '^(Date|added|deleted|modified): '

Zsh plugin providing diff-so-fancy

Zsh plugin zdharma/zsh-diff-so-fancy has this project as a submodule so installing the plugin installs diff-so-fancy. The plugin provides subcommand git dsf out of the box. Installation with Zinit, Zplug and Zgen:

# zinit
zinit ice lucid as"program" pick"bin/git-dsf"
zinit load zdharma/zsh-diff-so-fancy

# Or zplug
zplug "zdharma/zsh-diff-so-fancy", as:command, use:bin/git-dsf

# Or zgen and others
zgen zdharma/zsh-diff-so-fancy

hg configuration

You can configure hg diff output to use diff-so-fancy by adding this alias to your hgrc file:

[alias]
diff = !HGPLAIN=1 $HG diff --pager=on --config pager.pager=diff-so-fancy $@