Git tips & tricks

Git configuration tweaks

Ksconf as external difftool

Use ksconf diff as an external difftool provider for git. Edit ~/.gitconfig and add the following entices:

[difftool "ksconf"]
    cmd = "ksconf --force-color diff \"$LOCAL\" \"$REMOTE\" | less -R"
[difftool]
    prompt = false
[alias]
    ksdiff = "difftool --tool=ksconf"

Now you can run this new git alias to compare files in your directory using the ksconf diff feature instead of the default textual diff that git provides.

git ksdiff props.conf

Stanza aware textual diffs

Make git diff show the ‘stanza’ on the @@ output lines.

Note

How does git know that?

Ever wonder how git diff is able to show you the name of the function or method where changes were made? This works for many programming languages out of the box. If you’ve ever spend much time looking at diffs that additional context is invaluable. As it turns out, this is customizable by adding a stanza matching regular expression with a file pattern match.

Simply add the following settings to your git configuration:

[diff "conf"]
    xfuncname = "^(\\[.*\\])$"

Then register this new ability with specific file patterns using git’s attributes feature. Edit ~/.config/git/attributes and add:

*.conf diff=conf
*.meta diff=conf

Note

Didn’t work as expected?

Be aware that your location for your global-level attributes may be in a different location. In any case, you can use the following commands to test if the settings have been applied correctly.

git check-attr -a -- *.conf

Test to make sure the xfuncname attribute was set as expected:

git config diff.conf.xfuncname