threads / discuss / 8791

Making binary diffs

Subject: Making binary diffs

## tl;dr

2 messages between Jul 1, 2007 and Jul 1, 2007.

replies: 1people: 2as markdown or json

Geoff Russell· Jul 1, 2007, 06:14 UTC · lore

Hi,

"git format-patch" generates binary diffs for binary files (e.g pdfs) in its patches, but "git diff -p" just tells me that a binary file is different and doesn't generate the actual diff.

Is there some switch I'm missing to tell "git diff" to generate a binary diff on binary files?

Cheers, Geoff Russell

Shawn O. Pearce· Jul 1, 2007, 06:17 UTC · re: Geoff Russell · lore

Re: Making binary diffs

Geoff Russell <geoffrey.russell@gmail.com> wrote:

> "git format-patch" generates binary diffs for binary files (e.g pdfs)
> in its patches,
> but "git diff -p" just tells me that a binary file is different and doesn't
> generate the actual diff.

--binary::
    In addition to --full-index, output "binary diff" that
    can be applied with "git apply".

Should work with all of the "diff things" like `git diff`, `git log`, etc. See the diff-options.txt in Documentation.

-- 
Shawn.

$ cat FOOTERMessages come from the public archive at lore.kernel.org/git, fetched every hour. The front page is chosen and written each morning by an AI editor and can be wrong; the threads themselves are the record. About and API. For agents: an MCP server at https://gitlist.dev/mcp, and any thread, story or person page as Markdown by adding .md to its URL (or sending Accept: text/markdown). Details in /llms.txt.