Re: git-difftool

From: David Aguilar <davvid@gmail.com>
Date: Jan 2, 2009, 17:39 UTC
Message-ID: <402731c90901020939k1a8ae795oc4cbfd0ced992aab@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <vpq63kxofi3.fsf@bauges.imag.fr>

On Fri, Jan 2, 2009 at 8:10 AM, Matthieu Moy <Matthieu.Moy@imag.fr> wrote:

Show 17 quoted lines

>
> As done with "vimdiff" in another message, simply write a
> one-liner wrapper script that calls xxdiff $2 $3, and call this
> wrapper script.
>
> ...
>
> Right, but a script "git-difftool" calling the later is a one-liner,
> so 2 one-liners give you the same result as the ~500 lines script
> proposed. And GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF has the great advantage
> of being maintained together with git, and will most likely handle
> all cases (diff between index, working tree, arbitrary commit, ...)
> correctly.
>
> --
> Matthieu
>

Thanks for the feedback.  I've done exactly what you suggested.

I now have a git-difftool wrapper script that basically just sets up the environment for git-difftool-helper. git-difftool-helper does all of the merge tool configuration stuff ala http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-mergetool.html (it uses the same git config variables and thus works with existing custom commands). If you drop them both into the same directory it should work as-is (it munges $PATH).

It's not a two-liner (they do all that git config stuff and handle more than just vimdiff) but it does use GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF now, which makes the script infinitely more useful. This is much nicer now since you can pass any 'git diff' options to git-difftool and it'll handle it correctly.

The usage is simpler now too:

usage: git difftool [--no-prompt] [--tool=tool] ["git diff" options]

Thanks for your help,

-- 
    David