Icdiff

Improved colored diff

Installation

Download the latesticdiff and put it on your PATH.

Alternatively, install with packaging tools:

# pip
pip install icdiff
# apt
sudo apt install icdiff
# homebrew
brew install icdiff
# aur
yay -S icdiff
# nix
nix-env -i icdiff

Usage

icdiff [options] left_file right_file

Show differences between files in a two column view.

Options

 --version show program's version number and exit
-h, --help show this help message and exit
--cols=COLS specify the width of the screen. Autodetection is Unix
only
--encoding=ENCODING specify the file encoding; defaults to utf8
-E MATCHER, --exclude-lines=MATCHER
Do not diff lines that match this regex. Not
compatible with the 'line-numbers' option
--head=HEAD consider only the first N lines of each file
-H, --highlight color by changing the background color instead of the
foreground color. Very fast, ugly, displays all
changes
-L LABELS, --label=LABELS
override file labels with arbitrary tags. Use twice,
one for each file
-N, --line-numbers generate output with line numbers. Not compatible with
the 'exclude-lines' option.
--no-bold use non-bold colors; recommended for solarized
--no-headers don't label the left and right sides with their file
names
--output-encoding=OUTPUT_ENCODING
specify the output encoding; defaults to utf8
-r, --recursive recursively compare subdirectories
-s, --report-identical-files
report when two files are the same
--show-all-spaces color all non-matching whitespace including that which
is not needed for drawing the eye to changes. Slow,
ugly, displays all changes
--tabsize=TABSIZE tab stop spacing
-t, --truncate truncate long lines instead of wrapping them
-u, --patch generate patch. This is always true, and only exists
for compatibility
-U NUM, --unified=NUM, --numlines=NUM
how many lines of context to print; can't be combined
with --whole-file
-W, --whole-file show the whole file instead of just changed lines and
context
--strip-trailing-cr strip any trailing carriage return at the end of an
input line
--color-map=COLOR_MAP
choose which colors are used for which items. Default
is --color-map='add:green_bold,change:yellow_bold,desc
ription:blue,meta:magenta,separator:blue,subtract:red_
bold'. You don't have to override all of them:
'--color-map=separator:white,description:cyan

Using with Git

To see what it looks like, try:

git difftool --extcmd icdiff

To install this as a tool you can use with Git, copy git-icdiff into your PATH and run:

git icdiff

You can configure git-icdiff in Git's config:

git config --global icdiff.options '--highlight --line-numbers'

Using with subversion

To try it out, run:

svn diff --diff-cmd icdiff

Using with Mercurial

Add the following to your ~/.hgrc:

[extensions]
extdiff=
[extdiff]
cmd.icdiff=icdiff
opts.icdiff=--recursive --line-numbers

Or check more in-depth setup instructions.

Setting up a dev environment

Create a virtualenv and install the dev dependencies. This is not needed for normal usage.

virtualenv venv
source venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements-dev.txt

Running tests

./test.sh python3

Making a release

• Update ChangeLog with all the changes since the last release
• Update __version__ in icdiff
• Run tests, make sure they pass
• git commit -a -m "release ${version}"
• git push
• git tag release-${version}
• git push origin release-${version}
• A GitHub Action should be triggered due to the release tag being pushed, and will upload to PyPI.

License

This file is derived from difflib.HtmlDiff which is under license. I release my changes here under the same license. This is GPL compatible.