On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 3:30 PM, Elijah Newren <newren@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 4:23 PM, Avery Pennarun <apenwarr@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> I'm interested in using 'git diff' on some files that aren't actually >> inside a git repo at all. Specifically, the --color-words and >> --word-diff-regex are really cool and I happen to have a use for them >> on files that aren't stored verbatim in git. As a whole, git's >> implementation of diff seems to be the fastest-moving one out there, >> so I'd rather use it instead of another random diff implementation. >> > <snip> >> Is there already a way to get 'git diff' to do this? >> >> If not, would it be sensible to extend git-diff to do comparison >> between two outside files? > > Isn't this what git diff --no-index ... does? Aha, that was exactly what I wanted. :) Oddly, 'git diff file1 file2' *doesn't* work when file1 and file2 are in a working tree; git tries to diff something, apparently, but I don't know what. When you're outside a working tree, it works. And your "--no-index" suggestion is what makes it work even when you're in a working tree. Thanks to you and Brandon for your help. I guess I'll try to submit a patch to the git-diff manpage to make this type of usage more obvious. Have fun, Avery -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html