Documentation / diff-options.txton commit color-words: expand docs with precise semantics (c4b252c)
   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--stat[=width[,name-width]]::
  40        Generate a diffstat.  You can override the default
  41        output width for 80-column terminal by "--stat=width".
  42        The width of the filename part can be controlled by
  43        giving another width to it separated by a comma.
  44
  45--numstat::
  46        Similar to \--stat, but shows number of added and
  47        deleted lines in decimal notation and pathname without
  48        abbreviation, to make it more machine friendly.  For
  49        binary files, outputs two `-` instead of saying
  50        `0 0`.
  51
  52--shortstat::
  53        Output only the last line of the --stat format containing total
  54        number of modified files, as well as number of added and deleted
  55        lines.
  56
  57--dirstat[=limit]::
  58        Output the distribution of relative amount of changes (number of lines added or
  59        removed) for each sub-directory. Directories with changes below
  60        a cut-off percent (3% by default) are not shown. The cut-off percent
  61        can be set with "--dirstat=limit". Changes in a child directory is not
  62        counted for the parent directory, unless "--cumulative" is used.
  63
  64--dirstat-by-file[=limit]::
  65        Same as --dirstat, but counts changed files instead of lines.
  66
  67--summary::
  68        Output a condensed summary of extended header information
  69        such as creations, renames and mode changes.
  70
  71--patch-with-stat::
  72        Synonym for "-p --stat".
  73        {git-format-patch? This is the default.}
  74
  75-z::
  76        NUL-line termination on output.  This affects the --raw
  77        output field terminator.  Also output from commands such
  78        as "git-log" will be delimited with NUL between commits.
  79
  80--name-only::
  81        Show only names of changed files.
  82
  83--name-status::
  84        Show only names and status of changed files. See the description
  85        of the `--diff-filter` option on what the status letters mean.
  86
  87--color::
  88        Show colored diff.
  89
  90--no-color::
  91        Turn off colored diff, even when the configuration file
  92        gives the default to color output.
  93
  94--color-words[=<regex>]::
  95        Show colored word diff, i.e., color words which have changed.
  96        By default, words are separated by whitespace.
  97+
  98When a <regex> is specified, every non-overlapping match of the
  99<regex> is considered a word.  Anything between these matches is
 100considered whitespace and ignored(!) for the purposes of finding
 101differences.  You may want to append `|[^[:space:]]` to your regular
 102expression to make sure that it matches all non-whitespace characters.
 103A match that contains a newline is silently truncated(!) at the
 104newline.
 105
 106--no-renames::
 107        Turn off rename detection, even when the configuration
 108        file gives the default to do so.
 109
 110--check::
 111        Warn if changes introduce trailing whitespace
 112        or an indent that uses a space before a tab. Exits with
 113        non-zero status if problems are found. Not compatible with
 114        --exit-code.
 115
 116--full-index::
 117        Instead of the first handful of characters, show the full
 118        pre- and post-image blob object names on the "index"
 119        line when generating patch format output.
 120
 121--binary::
 122        In addition to --full-index, output "binary diff" that
 123        can be applied with "git apply".
 124
 125--abbrev[=<n>]::
 126        Instead of showing the full 40-byte hexadecimal object
 127        name in diff-raw format output and diff-tree header
 128        lines, show only a partial prefix.  This is
 129        independent of --full-index option above, which controls
 130        the diff-patch output format.  Non default number of
 131        digits can be specified with --abbrev=<n>.
 132
 133-B::
 134        Break complete rewrite changes into pairs of delete and create.
 135
 136-M::
 137        Detect renames.
 138
 139-C::
 140        Detect copies as well as renames.  See also `--find-copies-harder`.
 141
 142--diff-filter=[ACDMRTUXB*]::
 143        Select only files that are Added (`A`), Copied (`C`),
 144        Deleted (`D`), Modified (`M`), Renamed (`R`), have their
 145        type (i.e. regular file, symlink, submodule, ...) changed (`T`),
 146        are Unmerged (`U`), are
 147        Unknown (`X`), or have had their pairing Broken (`B`).
 148        Any combination of the filter characters may be used.
 149        When `*` (All-or-none) is added to the combination, all
 150        paths are selected if there is any file that matches
 151        other criteria in the comparison; if there is no file
 152        that matches other criteria, nothing is selected.
 153
 154--find-copies-harder::
 155        For performance reasons, by default, `-C` option finds copies only
 156        if the original file of the copy was modified in the same
 157        changeset.  This flag makes the command
 158        inspect unmodified files as candidates for the source of
 159        copy.  This is a very expensive operation for large
 160        projects, so use it with caution.  Giving more than one
 161        `-C` option has the same effect.
 162
 163-l<num>::
 164        -M and -C options require O(n^2) processing time where n
 165        is the number of potential rename/copy targets.  This
 166        option prevents rename/copy detection from running if
 167        the number of rename/copy targets exceeds the specified
 168        number.
 169
 170-S<string>::
 171        Look for differences that contain the change in <string>.
 172
 173--pickaxe-all::
 174        When -S finds a change, show all the changes in that
 175        changeset, not just the files that contain the change
 176        in <string>.
 177
 178--pickaxe-regex::
 179        Make the <string> not a plain string but an extended POSIX
 180        regex to match.
 181
 182-O<orderfile>::
 183        Output the patch in the order specified in the
 184        <orderfile>, which has one shell glob pattern per line.
 185
 186-R::
 187        Swap two inputs; that is, show differences from index or
 188        on-disk file to tree contents.
 189
 190--relative[=<path>]::
 191        When run from a subdirectory of the project, it can be
 192        told to exclude changes outside the directory and show
 193        pathnames relative to it with this option.  When you are
 194        not in a subdirectory (e.g. in a bare repository), you
 195        can name which subdirectory to make the output relative
 196        to by giving a <path> as an argument.
 197
 198-a::
 199--text::
 200        Treat all files as text.
 201
 202--ignore-space-at-eol::
 203        Ignore changes in whitespace at EOL.
 204
 205-b::
 206--ignore-space-change::
 207        Ignore changes in amount of whitespace.  This ignores whitespace
 208        at line end, and considers all other sequences of one or
 209        more whitespace characters to be equivalent.
 210
 211-w::
 212--ignore-all-space::
 213        Ignore whitespace when comparing lines.  This ignores
 214        differences even if one line has whitespace where the other
 215        line has none.
 216
 217--inter-hunk-context=<lines>::
 218        Show the context between diff hunks, up to the specified number
 219        of lines, thereby fusing hunks that are close to each other.
 220
 221--exit-code::
 222        Make the program exit with codes similar to diff(1).
 223        That is, it exits with 1 if there were differences and
 224        0 means no differences.
 225
 226--quiet::
 227        Disable all output of the program. Implies --exit-code.
 228
 229--ext-diff::
 230        Allow an external diff helper to be executed. If you set an
 231        external diff driver with linkgit:gitattributes[5], you need
 232        to use this option with linkgit:git-log[1] and friends.
 233
 234--no-ext-diff::
 235        Disallow external diff drivers.
 236
 237--ignore-submodules::
 238        Ignore changes to submodules in the diff generation.
 239
 240--src-prefix=<prefix>::
 241        Show the given source prefix instead of "a/".
 242
 243--dst-prefix=<prefix>::
 244        Show the given destination prefix instead of "b/".
 245
 246--no-prefix::
 247        Do not show any source or destination prefix.
 248
 249For more detailed explanation on these common options, see also
 250linkgit:gitdiffcore[7].