Do you use git difftool to review changes before making a commit? The problem with that is that you get to see the diff of one file at a time. You can't easily stop it after few files and you can't go back to a previous file. vimtabdiff.py loads all the files with diffs, one in each vim tab page. You can move around any file and edit the diffs easily.

Install

 mkdir -p ~/bin
# for python version >= 3.10
curl -o ~/bin/vimtabdiff.py "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/balki/vimtabdiff/master/vimtabdiff.py"# for python version < 3.10
curl -o ~/bin/vimtabdiff.py "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/balki/vimtabdiff/br-py38/vimtabdiff.py"
chmod +x ~/bin/vimtabdiff.py

You may need to add ~/bin to your PATH variable if not already done. See here for help. 👍 this issue for pip install support

Screenshot

Usage

usage: vimtabdiff.py [-h] [--vim VIM] [--onlydiffs][--skipmissing] pathA pathB
Show diff of files from two directories in vim tabs
positional arguments:
pathA
pathB
options:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
--vim VIM vim command to run
--onlydiffs only open files where there is a diff
--skipmissing skip non-existent files

Relevant vim tips

• gt → Go to next tab
• gT → Go to previous tab
• :tabr → Go to first tab
• :drop filenam<Tab> → Go to the tab with filename
• g<Tab> → Go to last used tab (Works in vim version > 8.2.1401)
• :set mouse=a → Now clicking on a tab works
• ]c → Go to next diff hunk
• [c → Go to previous diff hunk
• do, dp → Diff obtain, Diff put
• zo, zc, zi → Fold open, Fold close, toggle all folds

See Git diffs

Setup

 git config --global difftool.vimtabdiff.cmd 'vimtabdiff.py $LOCAL $REMOTE'
git config --global alias.dt 'difftool --tool vimtabdiff --dir-diff'

Usage

 git dt <any git diff revision expression># see `man gitrevisions`
git dt # Unstaged changes
git dt --staged # Staged changes
git dt HEAD~1 # Last commit
git di v1.0 v2.0 # diff between two tags

Using custom vim command

Using clean vim without reading vimrc

 git config --global difftool.vimtabdiff.cmd 'vimtabdiff.py --vim "vim --clean" $LOCAL $REMOTE'

Git config file (~/.gitconfig) should look like this

 [alias]
...dt = difftool --tool vimtabdiff --dir-diff
[difftool"vimtabdiff"]
cmd = vimtabdiff.py --vim \"vim --clean\" $LOCAL $REMOTE

Using better diff algorithm

 git config --global difftool.vimtabdiff.cmd 'vimtabdiff.py --vim "vim +\"set diffopt+=algorithm:patience\"" $LOCAL $REMOTE'

Note: Not tested in non-linux OS. But I guess it should work fine. Pull requests welcome if found any issues.

Similar

• https://gist.github.com/Osse/4709787 is very similar, written as a zsh script.
• https://github.com/will133/vim-dirdiff is a Vim plugin that uses an interactive list of files instead of tabs.
• https://github.com/Soares/tabdiff.vim is a Vim plugin takes a list of files as aguments.
• :Git difftool -y is a command from vim-fugitive which is a vim git plugin.