git-difftool(1) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | CONFIGURATION | SEE ALSO | GIT | COLOPHON

GIT-DIFFTOOL(1)                 Git Manual                GIT-DIFFTOOL(1)

NAME         top

       git-difftool - Show changes using common diff tools

SYNOPSIS         top

       git difftool [<options>] [<commit> [<commit>]] [--] [<path>...]

DESCRIPTION         top

       git difftool is a Git command that allows you to compare and edit
       files between revisions using common diff tools. git difftool is a
       frontend to git diff and accepts the same options and arguments.
       See git-diff(1).

OPTIONS         top

       -d, --dir-diff
           Copy the modified files to a temporary location and perform a
           directory diff on them. This mode never prompts before
           launching the diff tool.

       -y, --no-prompt
           Do not prompt before launching a diff tool.

       --prompt
           Prompt before each invocation of the diff tool. This is the
           default behaviour; the option is provided to override any
           configuration settings.

       --rotate-to=<file>
           Start showing the diff for the given path, the paths before it
           will move to the end and output.

       --skip-to=<file>
           Start showing the diff for the given path, skipping all the
           paths before it.

       -t <tool>, --tool=<tool>
           Use the diff tool specified by <tool>. Valid values include
           emerge, kompare, meld, and vimdiff. Run git difftool
           --tool-help for the list of valid <tool> settings.

           If a diff tool is not specified, git difftool will use the
           configuration variable diff.tool. If the configuration
           variable diff.tool is not set, git difftool will pick a
           suitable default.

           You can explicitly provide a full path to the tool by setting
           the configuration variable difftool.<tool>.path. For example,
           you can configure the absolute path to kdiff3 by setting
           difftool.kdiff3.path. Otherwise, git difftool assumes the tool
           is available in PATH.

           Instead of running one of the known diff tools, git difftool
           can be customized to run an alternative program by specifying
           the command line to invoke in a configuration variable
           difftool.<tool>.cmd.

           When git difftool is invoked with this tool (either through
           the -t or --tool option or the diff.tool configuration
           variable) the configured command line will be invoked with the
           following variables available: $LOCAL is set to the name of
           the temporary file containing the contents of the diff
           pre-image and $REMOTE is set to the name of the temporary file
           containing the contents of the diff post-image.  $MERGED is
           the name of the file which is being compared.  $BASE is
           provided for compatibility with custom merge tool commands and
           has the same value as $MERGED.

       --tool-help
           Print a list of diff tools that may be used with --tool.

       --[no-]symlinks
           git difftool's default behavior is to create symlinks to the
           working tree when run in --dir-diff mode and the right-hand
           side of the comparison yields the same content as the file in
           the working tree.

           Specifying --no-symlinks instructs git difftool to create
           copies instead.  --no-symlinks is the default on Windows.

       -x <command>, --extcmd=<command>
           Specify a custom command for viewing diffs.  git-difftool
           ignores the configured defaults and runs <command> $LOCAL
           $REMOTE when this option is specified. Additionally, $BASE is
           set in the environment.

       -g, --[no-]gui
           When git-difftool is invoked with the -g or --gui option the
           default diff tool will be read from the configured
           diff.guitool variable instead of diff.tool. This may be
           selected automatically using the configuration variable
           difftool.guiDefault. The --no-gui option can be used to
           override these settings. If diff.guitool is not set, we will
           fallback in the order of merge.guitool, diff.tool, merge.tool
           until a tool is found.

       --[no-]trust-exit-code
           Errors reported by the diff tool are ignored by default. Use
           --trust-exit-code to make git-difftool exit when an invoked
           diff tool returns a non-zero exit code.

           git-difftool will forward the exit code of the invoked tool
           when --trust-exit-code is used.

       See git-diff(1) for the full list of supported options.

CONFIGURATION         top

       git difftool falls back to git mergetool config variables when the
       difftool equivalents have not been defined.

       Everything above this line in this section isn’t included from the
       git-config(1) documentation. The content that follows is the same
       as what’s found there:

       diff.tool
           Controls which diff tool is used by git-difftool(1). This
           variable overrides the value configured in merge.tool. The
           list below shows the valid built-in values. Any other value is
           treated as a custom diff tool and requires that a
           corresponding difftool.<tool>.cmd variable is defined.

       diff.guitool
           Controls which diff tool is used by git-difftool(1) when the
           -g/--gui flag is specified. This variable overrides the value
           configured in merge.guitool. The list below shows the valid
           built-in values. Any other value is treated as a custom diff
           tool and requires that a corresponding difftool.<guitool>.cmd
           variable is defined.

           araxis
               Use Araxis Merge (requires a graphical session)

           bc
               Use Beyond Compare (requires a graphical session)

           bc3
               Use Beyond Compare (requires a graphical session)

           bc4
               Use Beyond Compare (requires a graphical session)

           codecompare
               Use Code Compare (requires a graphical session)

           deltawalker
               Use DeltaWalker (requires a graphical session)

           diffmerge
               Use DiffMerge (requires a graphical session)

           diffuse
               Use Diffuse (requires a graphical session)

           ecmerge
               Use ECMerge (requires a graphical session)

           emerge
               Use Emacs' Emerge

           examdiff
               Use ExamDiff Pro (requires a graphical session)

           guiffy
               Use Guiffy’s Diff Tool (requires a graphical session)

           gvimdiff
               Use gVim (requires a graphical session)

           kdiff3
               Use KDiff3 (requires a graphical session)

           kompare
               Use Kompare (requires a graphical session)

           meld
               Use Meld (requires a graphical session)

           nvimdiff
               Use Neovim

           opendiff
               Use FileMerge (requires a graphical session)

           p4merge
               Use HelixCore P4Merge (requires a graphical session)

           smerge
               Use Sublime Merge (requires a graphical session)

           tkdiff
               Use TkDiff (requires a graphical session)

           vimdiff
               Use Vim

           winmerge
               Use WinMerge (requires a graphical session)

           xxdiff
               Use xxdiff (requires a graphical session)

       difftool.<tool>.cmd
           Specify the command to invoke the specified diff tool. The
           specified command is evaluated in shell with the following
           variables available: LOCAL is set to the name of the temporary
           file containing the contents of the diff pre-image and REMOTE
           is set to the name of the temporary file containing the
           contents of the diff post-image.

           See the --tool=<tool> option in git-difftool(1) for more
           details.

       difftool.<tool>.path
           Override the path for the given tool. This is useful in case
           your tool is not in the PATH.

       difftool.trustExitCode
           Exit difftool if the invoked diff tool returns a non-zero exit
           status.

           See the --trust-exit-code option in git-difftool(1) for more
           details.

       difftool.prompt
           Prompt before each invocation of the diff tool.

       difftool.guiDefault
           Set true to use the diff.guitool by default (equivalent to
           specifying the --gui argument), or auto to select diff.guitool
           or diff.tool depending on the presence of a DISPLAY
           environment variable value. The default is false, where the
           --gui argument must be provided explicitly for the
           diff.guitool to be used.

SEE ALSO         top

       git-diff(1)
           Show changes between commits, commit and working tree, etc

       git-mergetool(1)
           Run merge conflict resolution tools to resolve merge conflicts

       git-config(1)
           Get and set repository or global options

GIT         top

       Part of the git(1) suite

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the git (Git distributed version control
       system) project.  Information about the project can be found at 
       ⟨http://git-scm.com/⟩.  If you have a bug report for this manual
       page, see ⟨http://git-scm.com/community⟩.  This page was obtained
       from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://github.com/git/git.git⟩ on 2025-02-02.  (At that time,
       the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
       repository was 2025-01-31.)  If you discover any rendering
       problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there is
       a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
       corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       [email protected]

Git 2.48.1.166.g58b580          2025-01-31                GIT-DIFFTOOL(1)

Pages that refer to this page: git(1)git-config(1)git-diff(1)git-difftool(1)