On Tue, Jan 12, 2021 at 10:07 PM Nicholas Guriev <nicholas@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > I was asked how to configure "git difftool" to open files using several > tabs and stop spawning diff application on every modified file. I looked > into Git source and found no possibility to run diff tool at one step. > > The patch allows a user to view diffs in single window at one go. The > current implementation is still poor and it can be used solely for > demonstration purposes. To see it in action, tweak the local gitconfig: > > git config difftool.prompt false > git config difftool.tabbed true > > Then run: > > git difftool -t vimdiff > > Or: > > git difftool -t meld > > The solution has some restrictions, diffing up to ten files works now (I > did not bother with dynamic memory allocation), and it does not handle spaces > in file names (I do not know how to pass them correctly to underlying tools > without "xargs -0"). > > I think the git-difftool--helper should be changed so that it could > process many files in single invocation and it would not use a temporary > file by itself. A similar behaviour can be done in git-mergetool, too. > > Do you have ideas how to better implement such a feature? Any comments > are welcome. > > P.S.: I'm attaching screenshots for a clear demo what I mean. > --- > diff.c | 4 ++-- > git-mergetool--lib.sh | 36 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++- > mergetools/meld | 4 ++++ > mergetools/vimdiff | 17 +++++++++++++++++ > 4 files changed, 58 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-) > > > I'm not really sure if "tabbed" is the best name for what's going on, though. It's really more of a "diff everything in one shot" mode, and it just so happens that the tools in question use tabs. General note -- similar to the convention followed by mergetool.hideResolved and other difftool things I think it would make sense for tools to be able to override this on a per-tool basis. That said, I wonder whether we need this new feature, or whether we should instead improve an existing one. I'm leaning towards improving the existing dir-diff feature as a better alternative. It's unfortunate that the "git difftool --dir-diff" feature doesn't seem to mesh well with vimdiff. It does work well with other tools that support diffing arbitrary directories, notably meld, xxdiff, etc. Regarding vimdiff + git difftool -d, there is this advice: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8156493/git-vimdiff-and-dirdiff meld works just fine with "git difftool -d" (arguably nicer, since it gives you a directory view and a diff view in separate tabs), so if the only improvement is for vimdiff, then maybe the advice with the DirDiff plugin might be a better way to go. Having something like a "difftool.vimdiff.useDirDiff" configuration variable could be a way for us to adopt the advice that they offer there. We could have the dir-diff difftool mode set a variable that the vimdiff scriptlet could use to detect that we're in dir-diff mode. Then, when that variable is set, vimdiff could use, vim -f '+next' '+execute \"DirDiff\" argv(0) argv(1)' $LOCAL $REMOTE (as mentioned in the SO page) to invoke dir-diff mode in vim. That way the user only needs to set: git config difftool.vimdiff.useDirDiff ... and then "git diffftool -d" will integrate with the DirDiff plugin. What do you think about improving the vimdiff scriptlet to better integrate with "git difftool -d" instead? -- David
