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 that 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 suppport for diff-so-fancy

This project includes a .plugin.zsh file providing ZSH framework support, so you can use any framework that supports the ZSH plugin standard to install diff-so-fancy and add it to your $PATH. Installation with Zinit, Zplug, and Zgen:

Install with zinit

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

Install with zplug

zplug "so-fancy/diff-so-fancy", as:command, use:bin/git-dsf

zgenom and others

zgenom load so-fancy/diff-so-fancy

Automatic fallback

You might automatically distribute your git config as part of your dotfiles to new machines, where you may not have access to diff-so-fancy. In this case, rather than getting an error message every time you run git diff or git add -p, the following configuration may help:

To make git diff automatically fall back to just using less:

git config --global core.pager "command -v diff-so-fancy >/dev/null 2>&1 && diff-so-fancy | less --tabs=4 -RF || less"

Making the interactive filter automatically fall back is a bit more difficult. A helper script comes into play here, to check if diff-so-fancy is installed:

#!/usr/bin/zsh
command -v diff-so-fancy >/dev/null 2>&1

if [[ $? -eq 0 ]] 
then
        cat | diff-so-fancy --patch
else
        cat
fi

Then, configure git (replace dsf-filter with whatever you named the helper script):

git config interactive.diffFilter "dsf-filter"

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 $@