Documentation / diff-options.txton commit Merge branch 'maint' (b7fba06)
   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--submodule[=<format>]::
  91        Chose the output format for submodule differences. <format> can be one of
  92        'short' and 'log'. 'short' just shows pairs of commit names, this format
  93        is used when this option is not given. 'log' is the default value for this
  94        option and lists the commits in that commit range like the 'summary'
  95        option of linkgit:git-submodule[1] does.
  96
  97--color::
  98        Show colored diff.
  99
 100--no-color::
 101        Turn off colored diff, even when the configuration file
 102        gives the default to color output.
 103
 104--color-words[=<regex>]::
 105        Show colored word diff, i.e., color words which have changed.
 106        By default, words are separated by whitespace.
 107+
 108When a <regex> is specified, every non-overlapping match of the
 109<regex> is considered a word.  Anything between these matches is
 110considered whitespace and ignored(!) for the purposes of finding
 111differences.  You may want to append `|[^[:space:]]` to your regular
 112expression to make sure that it matches all non-whitespace characters.
 113A match that contains a newline is silently truncated(!) at the
 114newline.
 115+
 116The regex can also be set via a diff driver or configuration option, see
 117linkgit:gitattributes[1] or linkgit:git-config[1].  Giving it explicitly
 118overrides any diff driver or configuration setting.  Diff drivers
 119override configuration settings.
 120
 121--no-renames::
 122        Turn off rename detection, even when the configuration
 123        file gives the default to do so.
 124
 125--check::
 126        Warn if changes introduce trailing whitespace
 127        or an indent that uses a space before a tab. Exits with
 128        non-zero status if problems are found. Not compatible with
 129        --exit-code.
 130
 131--full-index::
 132        Instead of the first handful of characters, show the full
 133        pre- and post-image blob object names on the "index"
 134        line when generating patch format output.
 135
 136--binary::
 137        In addition to --full-index, output "binary diff" that
 138        can be applied with "git apply".
 139
 140--abbrev[=<n>]::
 141        Instead of showing the full 40-byte hexadecimal object
 142        name in diff-raw format output and diff-tree header
 143        lines, show only a partial prefix.  This is
 144        independent of --full-index option above, which controls
 145        the diff-patch output format.  Non default number of
 146        digits can be specified with --abbrev=<n>.
 147
 148-B::
 149        Break complete rewrite changes into pairs of delete and create.
 150
 151-M::
 152        Detect renames.
 153
 154-C::
 155        Detect copies as well as renames.  See also `--find-copies-harder`.
 156
 157--diff-filter=[ACDMRTUXB*]::
 158        Select only files that are Added (`A`), Copied (`C`),
 159        Deleted (`D`), Modified (`M`), Renamed (`R`), have their
 160        type (i.e. regular file, symlink, submodule, ...) changed (`T`),
 161        are Unmerged (`U`), are
 162        Unknown (`X`), or have had their pairing Broken (`B`).
 163        Any combination of the filter characters may be used.
 164        When `*` (All-or-none) is added to the combination, all
 165        paths are selected if there is any file that matches
 166        other criteria in the comparison; if there is no file
 167        that matches other criteria, nothing is selected.
 168
 169--find-copies-harder::
 170        For performance reasons, by default, `-C` option finds copies only
 171        if the original file of the copy was modified in the same
 172        changeset.  This flag makes the command
 173        inspect unmodified files as candidates for the source of
 174        copy.  This is a very expensive operation for large
 175        projects, so use it with caution.  Giving more than one
 176        `-C` option has the same effect.
 177
 178-l<num>::
 179        -M and -C options require O(n^2) processing time where n
 180        is the number of potential rename/copy targets.  This
 181        option prevents rename/copy detection from running if
 182        the number of rename/copy targets exceeds the specified
 183        number.
 184
 185-S<string>::
 186        Look for differences that introduce or remove an instance of
 187        <string>. Note that this is different than the string simply
 188        appearing in diff output; see the 'pickaxe' entry in
 189        linkgit:gitdiffcore[7] for more details.
 190
 191--pickaxe-all::
 192        When -S finds a change, show all the changes in that
 193        changeset, not just the files that contain the change
 194        in <string>.
 195
 196--pickaxe-regex::
 197        Make the <string> not a plain string but an extended POSIX
 198        regex to match.
 199
 200-O<orderfile>::
 201        Output the patch in the order specified in the
 202        <orderfile>, which has one shell glob pattern per line.
 203
 204-R::
 205        Swap two inputs; that is, show differences from index or
 206        on-disk file to tree contents.
 207
 208--relative[=<path>]::
 209        When run from a subdirectory of the project, it can be
 210        told to exclude changes outside the directory and show
 211        pathnames relative to it with this option.  When you are
 212        not in a subdirectory (e.g. in a bare repository), you
 213        can name which subdirectory to make the output relative
 214        to by giving a <path> as an argument.
 215
 216-a::
 217--text::
 218        Treat all files as text.
 219
 220--ignore-space-at-eol::
 221        Ignore changes in whitespace at EOL.
 222
 223-b::
 224--ignore-space-change::
 225        Ignore changes in amount of whitespace.  This ignores whitespace
 226        at line end, and considers all other sequences of one or
 227        more whitespace characters to be equivalent.
 228
 229-w::
 230--ignore-all-space::
 231        Ignore whitespace when comparing lines.  This ignores
 232        differences even if one line has whitespace where the other
 233        line has none.
 234
 235--inter-hunk-context=<lines>::
 236        Show the context between diff hunks, up to the specified number
 237        of lines, thereby fusing hunks that are close to each other.
 238
 239--exit-code::
 240        Make the program exit with codes similar to diff(1).
 241        That is, it exits with 1 if there were differences and
 242        0 means no differences.
 243
 244--quiet::
 245        Disable all output of the program. Implies --exit-code.
 246
 247--ext-diff::
 248        Allow an external diff helper to be executed. If you set an
 249        external diff driver with linkgit:gitattributes[5], you need
 250        to use this option with linkgit:git-log[1] and friends.
 251
 252--no-ext-diff::
 253        Disallow external diff drivers.
 254
 255--ignore-submodules::
 256        Ignore changes to submodules in the diff generation.
 257
 258--src-prefix=<prefix>::
 259        Show the given source prefix instead of "a/".
 260
 261--dst-prefix=<prefix>::
 262        Show the given destination prefix instead of "b/".
 263
 264--no-prefix::
 265        Do not show any source or destination prefix.
 266
 267For more detailed explanation on these common options, see also
 268linkgit:gitdiffcore[7].