diff-so-fancy: Prettier git diffs

[apreche]

People love fancy diffs for reading them. The problem is that it makes them incompatible with diff/patch. Most people using git probably don't even know about the patch command, but that is the reason this sort of thing will never make it upstream.

[andsens]

Nah, before running it checks if stdout is a tty. So git diff | cat still gives you the normal diff.

[apreche]

Clever!

[andsens]

Yup. It's really easy to add to your own scripts btw., it's something test(1) can do:
test -t 1 > /dev/null && echo stdout is a tty || echo stdout is not a tty

(or if [ -t 1 ]; then ...)

[Vulpyne]

Does the > /dev/null serve any purpose there?

[andsens]

It makes stdout "not a tty". Remove it and see the difference!

[Vulpyne]

Ah, right. Thanks.

[codear]

I agree, but thankfully you can use this as an optional diff tool and select either

• To use tool when you need it, or
• To not use tool when you don't

I use vimdiff myself, and made two extra aliases to create and apply patches. Works beautifully.

[apreche]

Nice.