Highlight changed lines and changed bytes in each changed line

Question

The diff-highlight Perl contrib script produces output so similar to that of the Trac screenshots that it is likely that Trac is using it:

Install with:

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/git/git/fd99e2bda0ca6a361ef03c04d6d7fdc7a9c40b78/contrib/diff-highlight/diff-highlight && chmod +x diff-highlight

Move the file diff-highlight to the ~/bin/ directory (or wherever your $PATH is), and then add the following to your ~/.gitconfig:

[pager]
        diff = diff-highlight | less
        log = diff-highlight | less
        show = diff-highlight | less

Single copy paste install suggested by @cirosantilli:

cd ~/bin
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/git/git/fd99e2bda0ca6a361ef03c04d6d7fdc7a9c40b78/contrib/diff-highlight/diff-highlight
chmod +x diff-highlight
git config --global pager.log 'diff-highlight | less'
git config --global pager.show 'diff-highlight | less'
git config --global pager.diff 'diff-highlight | less'
git config --global interactive.diffFilter diff-highlight

While using git diff or git log and possibly others, use option --word-diff=color (there are also other modes for word diffs BTW)

diff-so-fancy is a diff-highlighter designed for human eyeballs.

It removes the leading +/- which are annoying for cut/paste and makes clear sections between files.

Coloured git (left) vs diff-so-fancy (right - note the character-level highlights):

If you want thediff-so-fancy (right side) output but not constrained to files in a git repository, add the following function to your .bashrc to use it on any files:

dsf() { git diff --no-index --color "$@" | diff-so-fancy; }

Eg:

dsf original changed-file

Character level highlighting and standard diff format

If you don't like the non-standard formatting of diff-so-fancy, but still want character-level git highlighting, use diff-highlight which will take git's output and produce the really pretty standard diff-format output:

To use it by default from git, add to your .gitconfig:

[color "diff-highlight"]
  oldNormal = red bold
  oldHighlight = red bold 52
  newNormal = green bold
  newHighlight = green bold 22

[pager]
  diff = diff-highlight | less -FRXsu --tabs=4

The [pager] section tells git to pipe its already colourised output to diff-highlight which colourises at the character level, and then pages the output in less (if required), rather than just using the default less.

The behaviour you want is now available in git itself (as was pointed out in a comment by naught101). To enable it you need to set your pager to

perl /usr/share/doc/git/contrib/diff-highlight/diff-highlight | less

where /usr/share/doc/git/contrib/diff-highlight/diff-highlight is the location of the highlighter script on Ubuntu 13.10 (I have no idea why it's in a doc folder). If it isn't there on your system try using locate diff-highlight to find it. Note that the highlighting script is not executable (at least on my machine), hence the requirement for perl.

To always use the highlighter for the various diff-like commands just add the following to your ~/.gitconfig file:

[pager]
    log = perl /usr/share/doc/git/contrib/diff-highlight/diff-highlight | less
    show = perl /usr/share/doc/git/contrib/diff-highlight/diff-highlight | less
    diff = perl /usr/share/doc/git/contrib/diff-highlight/diff-highlight | less

---

I added this as a new answer naught101's comment is buried and because the set up is not quite as trivial as it should be and at least on the version of Ubuntu that I have the instructions in the README don't work.

A utility for byte-based diffs has been distributed with official Git since v1.7.8¹. You just have to locate where it is installed on your machine and enable it.

Find where Git is installed

• MacOS with Git installed via Homebrew: It's /usr/local/opt/git
• Windows with Git for Windows: Run cd / && pwd -W to find the install directory.
• Linux: Nerd. If you don't already know where Git is installed, then ll $(which git) or locate git should help.

Link diff-highlight to your bin directory so that your PATH can find it

GIT_HOME='/usr/local/opt/git/'  # Use the value from the first step.
ln -s "${GIT_HOME}/share/git-core/contrib/diff-highlight/diff-highlight" \
      '/usr/local/bin/diff-highlight'

Enable it in your Git config

git config --global interactive.diffFilter diff-highlight # Use on interactive prompts
git config --global pager.diff "diff-highlight | less"    # Use on git diff
git config --global pager.log  "diff-highlight | less"    # Use on git log
git config --global pager.show "diff-highlight | less"    # Use on git show

¹ Here is the v1.7.8 version, but lots of changes have been made since then.

I use --color-words option and it works fine for me :

$ git diff --color-words | less -RS