Highlight changed lines and changed bytes in each changed line

Git Problem Overview

Open Source project Trac has an excellent diff highlighter — it highlights changed lines and changed bytes in each changed line! See here or here for examples.

Is there way to use the same color highlight (i.e. changed lines and changed bytes too) in bash terminal, git, or vim for diff output (patch-file)?

Git Solutions

Solution 1 - Git

The diff-highlight Perl contrib script produces output so similar to that of the Trac screenshots that it is likely that Trac is using it:

enter image description here

Install with:

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/git/git/fd99e2bda0ca6a361ef03c04d6d7fdc7a9c40b78/contrib/diff-highlight/diff-highlight && chmod +x diff-highlight

Move the file diff-highlight to the ~/bin/ directory (or wherever your $PATH is), and then add the following to your ~/.gitconfig:

[pager]
        diff = diff-highlight | less
        log = diff-highlight | less
        show = diff-highlight | less

Single copy paste install suggested by @cirosantilli:

cd ~/bin
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/git/git/fd99e2bda0ca6a361ef03c04d6d7fdc7a9c40b78/contrib/diff-highlight/diff-highlight
chmod +x diff-highlight
git config --global pager.log 'diff-highlight | less'
git config --global pager.show 'diff-highlight | less'
git config --global pager.diff 'diff-highlight | less'
git config --global interactive.diffFilter diff-highlight

Solution 2 - Git

While using git diff or git log and possibly others, use option --word-diff=color (there are also other modes for word diffs BTW)

Solution 3 - Git

diff-so-fancy is a diff-highlighter designed for human eyeballs.

It removes the leading +/- which are annoying for cut/paste and makes clear sections between files.

Coloured git (left) vs diff-so-fancy (right - note the character-level highlights):

If you want thediff-so-fancy (right side) output but not constrained to files in a git repository, add the following function to your .bashrc to use it on any files:

dsf() { git diff --no-index --color "$@" | diff-so-fancy; }

Eg:

dsf original changed-file

Character level highlighting and standard diff format

If you don't like the non-standard formatting of diff-so-fancy, but still want character-level git highlighting, use diff-highlight which will take git's output and produce the really pretty standard diff-format output:

To use it by default from git, add to your .gitconfig:

[color "diff-highlight"]
  oldNormal = red bold
  oldHighlight = red bold 52
  newNormal = green bold
  newHighlight = green bold 22

[pager]
  diff = diff-highlight | less -FRXsu --tabs=4

The [pager] section tells git to pipe its already colourised output to diff-highlight which colourises at the character level, and then pages the output in less (if required), rather than just using the default less.

Solution 4 - Git

A utility for byte-based diffs has been distributed with official Git since v1.7.8¹. You just have to locate where it is installed on your machine and enable it.

Find where Git is installed

MacOS with Git installed via Homebrew: It's /usr/local/opt/git (later versions: /opt/homebrew/Cellar/git/VERSION)
Windows with Git for Windows: Run cd / && pwd -W to find the install directory.
Linux: Nerd. If you don't already know where Git is installed, then ll $(which git) or locate git should help.

Link `diff-highlight` to your bin directory so that your PATH can find it

GIT_HOME='/usr/local/opt/git/'  # Use the value from the first step.
ln -s "${GIT_HOME}/share/git-core/contrib/diff-highlight/diff-highlight" \
      '/usr/local/bin/diff-highlight'

Enable it in your Git config

git config --global interactive.diffFilter diff-highlight # Use on interactive prompts
git config --global pager.diff "diff-highlight | less"    # Use on git diff
git config --global pager.log  "diff-highlight | less"    # Use on git log
git config --global pager.show "diff-highlight | less"    # Use on git show

¹ Here is the v1.7.8 version, but lots of changes have been made since then.

Solution 5 - Git

The behaviour you want is now available in git itself (as was pointed out in a comment by naught101). To enable it you need to set your pager to

perl /usr/share/doc/git/contrib/diff-highlight/diff-highlight | less

where /usr/share/doc/git/contrib/diff-highlight/diff-highlight is the location of the highlighter script on Ubuntu 13.10 (I have no idea why it's in a doc folder). If it isn't there on your system try using locate diff-highlight to find it. Note that the highlighting script is not executable (at least on my machine), hence the requirement for perl.

To always use the highlighter for the various diff-like commands just add the following to your ~/.gitconfig file:

[pager]
    log = perl /usr/share/doc/git/contrib/diff-highlight/diff-highlight | less
    show = perl /usr/share/doc/git/contrib/diff-highlight/diff-highlight | less
    diff = perl /usr/share/doc/git/contrib/diff-highlight/diff-highlight | less

I added this as a new answer naught101's comment is buried and because the set up is not quite as trivial as it should be and at least on the version of Ubuntu that I have the instructions in the README don't work.

Solution 6 - Git

I use --color-words option and it works fine for me :

$ git diff --color-words | less -RS

Solution 7 - Git

as @dshepherd says: >The behaviour you want is now available in git itself

But diff-highlight is located in DOC and is not available from shell.
To install diff-highlight into your ~/bin directory follow next steps (This will save your typing):

$ locate diff-highlight
$ cd /usr/share/doc/git/contrib/diff-highlight  #or path you locate
$ sudo make
$ mv diff-highlight ~/bin

Then configure your .gitconfig as official doc says:

[pager]
    log  = diff-highlight | less
    show = diff-highlight | less
    diff = diff-highlight | less

UPD
Also you can try next on latest git without any installation:

git diff --color-words=.

More complex:

git diff --color-words='[^[:space:]]|([[:alnum:]]|UTF_8_GUARD)+'

Solution 8 - Git

Emacs has the ediff-patch-buffer function which should fulfill your needs.

Open the un-patched file in emacs type ESC-x, ediff-patch-buffer.

Follow the prompts and you should see a highlighted comparison of the patched and original versions of your file.

As per your comment the following will will give you a bash solution requiring only dwdiff:

#!/bin/bash
paste -d'\n' <(dwdiff -2 -L -c <(cat $2) <(patch $2 -i $1 -o -)) <(dwdiff -1 -L -c <(cat $2) <(patch $2 -i $1 -o -))| uniq

Solution 9 - Git

Diffy

GitLab is using Diffy https://github.com/samg/diffy (Ruby) to achieve output similar to GitHub and diff-highlight:

enter image description here

Diffy makes the diff itself using the same algorithm ad Git, and supports different types of outputs, including the HTML output that GitLab uses:

gem install diffy
echo '
  require "diffy"    
  puts Diffy::Diff.new("a b c\n", "a B c\n").to_s(:html)
' | ruby

Output:

<div class="diff">
  <ul>
    <li class="del"><del>a <strong>b</strong> c</del></li>
    <li class="ins"><ins>a <strong>B</strong> c</ins></li>
  </ul>
</div>

Note how strong was added to the changed bytes.

Solution 10 - Git

Note: this is a duplicate of what is found here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/49278577/how-to-improve-gits-diff-highlighting/60970801#60970801 . Posting my answer here too though, as it may be helpful to some people who find directly this thread :)

As said in some previous answers, this is possible with only git stuff. I post this as the instructions may be a bit easier to follow depending on your system, but this is similar to several other answers.

One solution that is purely relying on git and its contribs. This requires no additional files than what comes with git. All explanations are for Ubuntu (tested on 18.04LTS), should work similarly on other linux systems:

Locate the diff-highlight contrib git snippet:

find -L /usr -name diff-highlight -type f

on my system the only valid answer is:

/usr/share/doc/git/contrib/diff-highlight/diff-highlight

Make the corresponding perl script executable. In my case I needed to do:

sudo chmod +x /usr/share/doc/git/contrib/diff-highlight/diff-highlight

Update your ~/.gitconfig to get the result you want, by adding (note these are TABS, not 4 spaces):

[color "diff-highlight"]
	oldNormal = red
	oldHighlight = red 52
	newNormal = green
	newHighlight = green 22

Enjoy the result (note: this is only for the diff coloring + highlight, I have other things at play here too for the prompt of course :) ).

Solution 11 - Git

Yes, Vim does this including the highlighting of text changed within a line.
See :h diff and :h 08.7 for more details on how to diff files.

Vim uses a fairly simple algorithm for it's highlighting. It searches the line for the first changed character, and then the last changed character, and simply highlights all characters between them.
This means you can't have multiple highlights per line - many design decisions in Vim prioritise efficiency.

Solution 12 - Git

vimdiff file1 file2 will display the difference character-wise between two files.

vimdiff is a diff tool included into vim. (Vim should have been compiled with the +diff option, to be sure you can check with :version )

You can also launch it from inside vim. See :help diff for more information and commands.

Content Type	Original Author	Original Content on Stackoverflow
Question	user256497	View Question on Stackoverflow
Solution 1 - Git	user767082	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 2 - Git	anydot	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 3 - Git	Tom Hale	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 4 - Git	Cory Klein	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 5 - Git	dshepherd	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 6 - Git	amized	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 7 - Git	Eugen Konkov	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 8 - Git	Finbar Crago	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 9 - Git	Ciro Santilli Путлер Капут 六四事	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 10 - Git	Zorglub29	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 11 - Git	PDug	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 12 - Git	Xavier T.	View Answer on Stackoverflow

Highlight changed lines and changed bytes in each changed line

Git Problem Overview

Git Solutions

Solution 1 - Git

Solution 2 - Git

Solution 3 - Git

Solution 4 - Git

Find where Git is installed

Link `diff-highlight` to your bin directory so that your PATH can find it

Enable it in your Git config

Solution 5 - Git

Solution 6 - Git

Solution 7 - Git

Solution 8 - Git

Solution 9 - Git

Solution 10 - Git

Solution 11 - Git

Solution 12 - Git

How to clear ostringstream

How to read git log graph

Attributions

Git Problem Overview

Git Solutions

Solution 1 - Git

Solution 2 - Git

Solution 3 - Git

Solution 4 - Git

Find where Git is installed

Link diff-highlight to your bin directory so that your PATH can find it

Enable it in your Git config

Solution 5 - Git

Solution 6 - Git

Solution 7 - Git

Solution 8 - Git

Solution 9 - Git

Solution 10 - Git

Solution 11 - Git

Solution 12 - Git

How to clear ostringstream

How to read git log graph

Attributions

Link `diff-highlight` to your bin directory so that your PATH can find it