From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Mon, 24 Sep 2018 00:43:07 GMT
Subject: Re: git diff-tree ignores --textconv
Message-ID: <20180924004307.GA26103@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <41cd358c-d900-2996-b78a-b9d897a2ba2b@stason.org>

On Sun, Sep 23, 2018 at 03:41:45PM -0700, Stas Bekman wrote:

> $ git config --get diff.jupyternotebook.command
> git-nbdiffdriver diff

That's an "external diff driver", not a textconv driver.

So here:

> $ GIT_TRACE=1 git diff-tree -p HEAD --textconv test/test.ipynb
> <shows normal diff, ignoring nbdiff>

You probably want "--ext-diff", not "--textconv".

There's some discussion in the gitattributes manpage, but the short of
it is that textconv converts binary input to text, which is then fed
through the normal diff mechanism. Whereas an external diff driver is
given both sides and can produce whatever output it wants. Textconv is
less flexible, but generally way easier to write.

-Peff