> Well, it _is_ true that you can use it the same way. It's just that you > need to configure it to use whatever 3rd-party tool you want (and if you > do not want to configure a tool, then you are better off just using > git-diff directly). It was only due to a bug/historical accident that it > behaved just like git-diff in the no-index case (but not in the regular > case -- AFAICT, that would have been broken for your script always). Yes, it would seem that I had only stumbled upon the broken behavior because of my --no-index use case, but at least the inconsistency is fixed. > That does make some sense to me for your use case. But I'm worried it > would be a worse experience for people new to difftool (they run it and > scratch their heads why it does not do anything different, whereas now > they get walked through an interactive configuration). That is a fair point. UX matters even for CLI programs. Prior to it being fixed, I myself was confused as to why I was getting a git-diff output when trying to use an external tool with git-difftool but hadn't configured it correctly. At least now there is some feedback when the configuration is invalid. > In the meantime, I think you can probably switch behavior in your script > by checking if the diff.tool config is set. It might be nice if difftool > had a better way to query that without you having to know if it's > configured. What I ended up doing in my app was just requiring the user to be explicit (via separate arguments) about whether they wanted to use git-diff or git-difftool. My app also accepts additional arguments that get passed through to git-diff/difftool and I didn't want to have to check those in addition to git-config. I think that would have been significantly more complex to implement. > Or in your case I suppose even better would just be an > option like "--if-not-configured-just-use-regular-diff". Then it would > do what you want, without impacting users who do want the interactive > setup. If such an option was considered I would be in favor of it. Maybe call it "--no-tutorial" or perhaps "--diff-fallback". But having fixed my app, I'm content with the status quo too, now. Thanks, Logan
