so-fancy / diff-so-fancy
Good-lookin' diffs. Actually… nah… The best-lookin' diffs. :tada:
AI Architecture Analysis
This repository is indexed by RepoMind. By analyzing so-fancy/diff-so-fancy in our AI interface, you can instantly generate complete architecture diagrams, visualize control flows, and perform automated security audits across the entire codebase.
Our Agentic Context Augmented Generation (Agentic CAG) engine loads full source files into context, avoiding the fragmentation of traditional RAG systems. Ask questions about the architecture, dependencies, or specific features to see it in action.
Embed this Badge
Showcase RepoMind's analysis directly in your repository's README.
Repository Summary (README)
Preview🎩 diff-so-fancy
diff-so-fancy strives to make your diffs human readable instead of machine readable. This helps improve code quality and helps you spot defects faster.
🖼️ Screenshot
Vanilla git diff vs git and diff-so-fancy
📦 Install
Simply copy the diff-so-fancy script from the latest release into your $PATH and you're done. Alternately to test development features you can clone this repo and then put the diff-so-fancy script (symlink will work) into your $PATH. The lib/ directory will need to be kept relative to the core script.
diff-so-fancy is also available from the NPM registry, brew, Fedora, in the Arch extra repo, and as ppa:aos for Debian/Ubuntu Linux.
Issues relating to packaging ("installation does not work", "version is out of date", etc.) should be directed to those packages' repositories/issue trackers where applicable.
✨ Usage
With git
Configure git to use diff-so-fancy for all diff output:
git config --global core.pager "diff-so-fancy | less --tabs=4 -RF"
git config --global interactive.diffFilter "diff-so-fancy --patch"
Manually with diff
Use -u with diff for unified output, and pipe the output to diff-so-fancy:
diff -u file_a file_b | diff-so-fancy
It also supports the recursive mode of diff with -r or --recursive as first argument
diff -r -u folder_a folder_b | diff-so-fancy
diff --recursive -u folder_a folder_b | diff-so-fancy
⚒️ Options
markEmptyLines
Should the first block of an empty line be colored. (Default: true)
git config --bool --global diff-so-fancy.markEmptyLines false
changeHunkIndicators
Simplify git header chunks to a more human readable format. (Default: true)
git config --bool --global diff-so-fancy.changeHunkIndicators false
stripLeadingSymbols
Should the pesky + or - at line-start be removed. (Default: true)
git config --bool --global diff-so-fancy.stripLeadingSymbols false
useUnicodeRuler
By default, the separator for the file header uses Unicode line-drawing characters. If this is causing output errors on your terminal, set this to false to use ASCII characters instead. (Default: true)
git config --bool --global diff-so-fancy.useUnicodeRuler false
rulerWidth
By default, the separator for the file header spans the full width of the terminal. Use this setting to set the width of the file header manually.
git config --global diff-so-fancy.rulerWidth 80
👨 The diff-so-fancy team
| Person | Role |
|---|---|
| @scottchiefbaker | Project lead |
| @OJFord | Bug triage |
| @GenieTim | Travis OSX fixes |
| @AOS | Debian packager |
| @Stevemao/@Paul Irish | NPM release team |
🧬 Contributing
Pull requests are quite welcome, and should target the next branch. We are also looking for any feedback or ideas on how to make diff-so-fancy even fancier.
Other documentation
🔃 Alternatives
- Delta
- Lazygit with diff-so-fancy integration
🏛️ License
MIT