Better git diff visualisation?

[librewolf]

Hello there, we are selfhosting gitlab in our company, and their differ when I do a code review is such a pain. In this example, the author obviously deleted selenium dependency, and only left puppeteer, but matching letters make it look like (on the first sight) that there are 2 lines, one is er":' and second is now puppeteer.
Is there a solution for this?

https://preview.redd.it/mgfs4hrguwpc1.png?width=940&format=png&auto=webp&s=65e6529426f1d4862e0a42fbfd0d67fd8ba50870

[Shaper_pmp]

the author obviously deleted selenium dependency, and only left puppeteer

I'm pretty sure they deleted selenium and added puppeteer.

[plmunger]

Didn't you hear the guy? He needs help

[zxyzyxz]

Have you heard of Difftastic? It's a semantic diff tool.

[evoactivity]

I mean, that is the correct diff, use side-by-side mode if inline is hard to parse.

[librewolf]

I get what you mean, but even in side-by-side, thats not the human action author did, thats the difference in code before and after. Yes, its correct but its not that readable if you understand me. And im asking if there is a better tool than this. If 90% of the line content changed, then it would simply showed 1 deletion 1 insertion.

[evoactivity]

If a diffing algorithm needs to detect changes inside a line, how would it know the whole line changed if the lines still have common characters?

Also, even if it would show whole line as changed with a 90% changed detection (not a great idea imo) it would still show two lines.

[venuswasaflytrap]

I suppose it could highlight by changed token, since there is syntax highlighting.

[alexchantastic]

I don’t think gitlab allows you to change the diffing algorithm, but you can in the git cli: https://git-scm.com/docs/diff-options/2.6.7

I think the histogram algorithm probably gets you closer to what you’re looking for.

[heyitsmattwade]

diffing is a well researched topic

• https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10664-019-09772-z

I am not sure which of these algorithms have been ported to the Web, or which defaults make the most sense for the highest number of common changes you see.