Documentation / diff-options.txton commit Merge branch 'js/diff-color-words' (9847a52)
   1// Please don't remove this comment as asciidoc behaves badly when
   2// the first non-empty line is ifdef/ifndef. The symptom is that
   3// without this comment the <git-diff-core> attribute conditionally
   4// defined below ends up being defined unconditionally.
   5// Last checked with asciidoc 7.0.2.
   6
   7ifndef::git-format-patch[]
   8ifndef::git-diff[]
   9ifndef::git-log[]
  10:git-diff-core: 1
  11endif::git-log[]
  12endif::git-diff[]
  13endif::git-format-patch[]
  14
  15ifdef::git-format-patch[]
  16-p::
  17        Generate patches without diffstat.
  18endif::git-format-patch[]
  19
  20ifndef::git-format-patch[]
  21-p::
  22-u::
  23        Generate patch (see section on generating patches).
  24        {git-diff? This is the default.}
  25endif::git-format-patch[]
  26
  27-U<n>::
  28--unified=<n>::
  29        Generate diffs with <n> lines of context instead of
  30        the usual three. Implies "-p".
  31
  32--raw::
  33        Generate the raw format.
  34        {git-diff-core? This is the default.}
  35
  36--patch-with-raw::
  37        Synonym for "-p --raw".
  38
  39--patience::
  40        Generate a diff using the "patience diff" algorithm.
  41
  42--stat[=width[,name-width]]::
  43        Generate a diffstat.  You can override the default
  44        output width for 80-column terminal by "--stat=width".
  45        The width of the filename part can be controlled by
  46        giving another width to it separated by a comma.
  47
  48--numstat::
  49        Similar to \--stat, but shows number of added and
  50        deleted lines in decimal notation and pathname without
  51        abbreviation, to make it more machine friendly.  For
  52        binary files, outputs two `-` instead of saying
  53        `0 0`.
  54
  55--shortstat::
  56        Output only the last line of the --stat format containing total
  57        number of modified files, as well as number of added and deleted
  58        lines.
  59
  60--dirstat[=limit]::
  61        Output the distribution of relative amount of changes (number of lines added or
  62        removed) for each sub-directory. Directories with changes below
  63        a cut-off percent (3% by default) are not shown. The cut-off percent
  64        can be set with "--dirstat=limit". Changes in a child directory is not
  65        counted for the parent directory, unless "--cumulative" is used.
  66
  67--dirstat-by-file[=limit]::
  68        Same as --dirstat, but counts changed files instead of lines.
  69
  70--summary::
  71        Output a condensed summary of extended header information
  72        such as creations, renames and mode changes.
  73
  74--patch-with-stat::
  75        Synonym for "-p --stat".
  76        {git-format-patch? This is the default.}
  77
  78-z::
  79        NUL-line termination on output.  This affects the --raw
  80        output field terminator.  Also output from commands such
  81        as "git-log" will be delimited with NUL between commits.
  82
  83--name-only::
  84        Show only names of changed files.
  85
  86--name-status::
  87        Show only names and status of changed files. See the description
  88        of the `--diff-filter` option on what the status letters mean.
  89
  90--color::
  91        Show colored diff.
  92
  93--no-color::
  94        Turn off colored diff, even when the configuration file
  95        gives the default to color output.
  96
  97--color-words[=<regex>]::
  98        Show colored word diff, i.e., color words which have changed.
  99        By default, words are separated by whitespace.
 100+
 101When a <regex> is specified, every non-overlapping match of the
 102<regex> is considered a word.  Anything between these matches is
 103considered whitespace and ignored(!) for the purposes of finding
 104differences.  You may want to append `|[^[:space:]]` to your regular
 105expression to make sure that it matches all non-whitespace characters.
 106A match that contains a newline is silently truncated(!) at the
 107newline.
 108+
 109The regex can also be set via a diff driver or configuration option, see
 110linkgit:gitattributes[1] or linkgit:git-config[1].  Giving it explicitly
 111overrides any diff driver or configuration setting.  Diff drivers
 112override configuration settings.
 113
 114--no-renames::
 115        Turn off rename detection, even when the configuration
 116        file gives the default to do so.
 117
 118--check::
 119        Warn if changes introduce trailing whitespace
 120        or an indent that uses a space before a tab. Exits with
 121        non-zero status if problems are found. Not compatible with
 122        --exit-code.
 123
 124--full-index::
 125        Instead of the first handful of characters, show the full
 126        pre- and post-image blob object names on the "index"
 127        line when generating patch format output.
 128
 129--binary::
 130        In addition to --full-index, output "binary diff" that
 131        can be applied with "git apply".
 132
 133--abbrev[=<n>]::
 134        Instead of showing the full 40-byte hexadecimal object
 135        name in diff-raw format output and diff-tree header
 136        lines, show only a partial prefix.  This is
 137        independent of --full-index option above, which controls
 138        the diff-patch output format.  Non default number of
 139        digits can be specified with --abbrev=<n>.
 140
 141-B::
 142        Break complete rewrite changes into pairs of delete and create.
 143
 144-M::
 145        Detect renames.
 146
 147-C::
 148        Detect copies as well as renames.  See also `--find-copies-harder`.
 149
 150--diff-filter=[ACDMRTUXB*]::
 151        Select only files that are Added (`A`), Copied (`C`),
 152        Deleted (`D`), Modified (`M`), Renamed (`R`), have their
 153        type (i.e. regular file, symlink, submodule, ...) changed (`T`),
 154        are Unmerged (`U`), are
 155        Unknown (`X`), or have had their pairing Broken (`B`).
 156        Any combination of the filter characters may be used.
 157        When `*` (All-or-none) is added to the combination, all
 158        paths are selected if there is any file that matches
 159        other criteria in the comparison; if there is no file
 160        that matches other criteria, nothing is selected.
 161
 162--find-copies-harder::
 163        For performance reasons, by default, `-C` option finds copies only
 164        if the original file of the copy was modified in the same
 165        changeset.  This flag makes the command
 166        inspect unmodified files as candidates for the source of
 167        copy.  This is a very expensive operation for large
 168        projects, so use it with caution.  Giving more than one
 169        `-C` option has the same effect.
 170
 171-l<num>::
 172        -M and -C options require O(n^2) processing time where n
 173        is the number of potential rename/copy targets.  This
 174        option prevents rename/copy detection from running if
 175        the number of rename/copy targets exceeds the specified
 176        number.
 177
 178-S<string>::
 179        Look for differences that contain the change in <string>.
 180
 181--pickaxe-all::
 182        When -S finds a change, show all the changes in that
 183        changeset, not just the files that contain the change
 184        in <string>.
 185
 186--pickaxe-regex::
 187        Make the <string> not a plain string but an extended POSIX
 188        regex to match.
 189
 190-O<orderfile>::
 191        Output the patch in the order specified in the
 192        <orderfile>, which has one shell glob pattern per line.
 193
 194-R::
 195        Swap two inputs; that is, show differences from index or
 196        on-disk file to tree contents.
 197
 198--relative[=<path>]::
 199        When run from a subdirectory of the project, it can be
 200        told to exclude changes outside the directory and show
 201        pathnames relative to it with this option.  When you are
 202        not in a subdirectory (e.g. in a bare repository), you
 203        can name which subdirectory to make the output relative
 204        to by giving a <path> as an argument.
 205
 206-a::
 207--text::
 208        Treat all files as text.
 209
 210--ignore-space-at-eol::
 211        Ignore changes in whitespace at EOL.
 212
 213-b::
 214--ignore-space-change::
 215        Ignore changes in amount of whitespace.  This ignores whitespace
 216        at line end, and considers all other sequences of one or
 217        more whitespace characters to be equivalent.
 218
 219-w::
 220--ignore-all-space::
 221        Ignore whitespace when comparing lines.  This ignores
 222        differences even if one line has whitespace where the other
 223        line has none.
 224
 225--inter-hunk-context=<lines>::
 226        Show the context between diff hunks, up to the specified number
 227        of lines, thereby fusing hunks that are close to each other.
 228
 229--exit-code::
 230        Make the program exit with codes similar to diff(1).
 231        That is, it exits with 1 if there were differences and
 232        0 means no differences.
 233
 234--quiet::
 235        Disable all output of the program. Implies --exit-code.
 236
 237--ext-diff::
 238        Allow an external diff helper to be executed. If you set an
 239        external diff driver with linkgit:gitattributes[5], you need
 240        to use this option with linkgit:git-log[1] and friends.
 241
 242--no-ext-diff::
 243        Disallow external diff drivers.
 244
 245--ignore-submodules::
 246        Ignore changes to submodules in the diff generation.
 247
 248--src-prefix=<prefix>::
 249        Show the given source prefix instead of "a/".
 250
 251--dst-prefix=<prefix>::
 252        Show the given destination prefix instead of "b/".
 253
 254--no-prefix::
 255        Do not show any source or destination prefix.
 256
 257For more detailed explanation on these common options, see also
 258linkgit:gitdiffcore[7].