Git Diff

Using visual git tools can save time and help you efficiently review changes.

There are many tools but we prefer and recommend diffmerge. It's open-source and cross-platform.

Important Note for Mac

Please download "installer" version, not "DMG" version.

Install

1. Download diffmerge for your platform.
2. Run following commands on your machine to set diffmerge as git's diff and merge tool.

git config --global diff.tool diffmerge
git config --global difftool.diffmerge.cmd 'diffmerge "$LOCAL" "$REMOTE"'
git config --global merge.tool diffmerge
git config --global mergetool.diffmerge.cmd 'diffmerge --merge --result="$MERGED" "$LOCAL" "$(if test -f "$BASE"; then echo "$BASE"; else echo "$LOCAL"; fi)" "$REMOTE"'
git config --global mergetool.diffmerge.trustExitCode true

After this instead of git diff, you can use git difftool.

To resolve merge conflicts, you can run git mergetool

TODO: if there are multiple files modified, git difftool can't open them all together. git difftool -d opens two dir but diffmerge doesn't show diff. Not sure it it's diffmerge issue or git difftool issue.

References

1. Main Source for this article - http://twobitlabs.com/2011/08/install-diffmerge-git-mac-os-x/
2. Meld - an alternative to diffmerge. Not tested yet.
3. More diff tools for Mac - http://www.git-tower.com/blog/diff-tools-mac/