Re: [PATCH 0/3] Teach Git about the patience diff algorithm

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Jan 2, 2009, 19:39 UTC
Message-ID: <20090102193904.GB9129@coredump.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.LFD.2.00.0901021050450.5086@localhost.localdomain>

On Fri, Jan 02, 2009 at 11:03:07AM -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote:

> Well, it's also the test-case in the very first hit on google for 
> "patience diff" (with the quotes).
> 
> In fact, it's the _only_ one I ever found ;)

If you just want to see the results on some real-world cases (and don't care about measuring performance), try installing bzr and using their patiencediff test program as a GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF.

On Debian, it's:

  $ sudo apt-get install bzr
  $ cat >$HOME/patience <<'EOF'
    #!/bin/sh
    exec python /usr/share/pyshared/bzrlib/patiencediff.py "$2" "$5"
    EOF
  $ chmod 755 patience
  $ GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF=$HOME/patience git diff

Other distributions presumably install patiencediff.py somewhere similar (or you can maybe even pull it from the source, but presumably you have to install some other bzr modules, too).

-Peff