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Questions about --ext-diff

From
Anselm Schüler <mail@anselmschueler.com>
Date
Aug 21, 2026, 11:13 UTC
Message-ID
<1c1567ec-c81a-45be-8b92-2c995dd34c16@anselmschueler.com>

I’m unsure what the purpose of --ext-diff is. It seems to me that custom diff filters should just always be executed.

Is --ext-diff a security feature? It seems like it isn’t, since git-diff will happily execute the diff filter.

Maybe I don’t correctly understand what a diff filter is intended to be used for. What situation would you want a diff filter to be run by git-diff, but not by e.g. git-show?

~Anselm Schüler <mail@anselmschueler.com>
Next: Jeff King
Message 1 of 3 in “Questions about --ext-diff”
  1. Anselm SchülerAug 21, 2026
  2. Jeff KingAug 24, 2026
  3. Junio C HamanoAug 24, 2026

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