Ignore whitespace in Visual Studio Code git diff view

Question

Is it possible to ignore white-space when viewing code differences of a file (generated by GIT) in Visual Studio Code? That will be really helpful in checking for actual code additions/deletions before committing.

Estrada

Answer 1

I believe OP is asking to ignore all whitespaces (including between words) not just trailing whitespaces.
Unfortunately, it's still not implemented and you can track the process status here: https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/43026

Orthognathous

"hediet self-assigned this 3 weeks ago" please hediet, make it happen – Supine

Do you know if there is also a feature request for diffEditor.ignoreLinebreaks? My search for diffEditor line break seems to have no relevant result. There is a comment that suggests to add ignore line breaks – Encephalon

I created a feature request to ignore line breaks – Encephalon

5 years later... – Fall

Answer 2

Add on your settings.json:

"diffEditor.ignoreTrimWhitespace": true,

Cicisbeo

EDIT: I found that this setting only controls if the diff editor shows changes in leading or trailing whitespace as diffs. It does not consider whitespaces in-between the same line. I want the diff editor to ignore all the whitespace in the code, not just leading and ending whitespace of a line. – Estrada

It's also available in Preferences,Settings. – Kierakieran

doesn't affect leading whitespace – Overzealous

File => Preferences => Settings => Diff Editor => Ignore Trim Whitespace. – Animosity

Not sure when it was added, but there's an icon to toggle this at the top of the diff document pane now. – Fullmouthed

whitespace toggle button looks like this: ¶ – Brigitta

Use scm.diffDecorationsIgnoreTrimWhitespace if you want to ignore whitespace on gutter indicator. Valid values for it are inherit|true|false. If you set inherit, it will inherit from diffEditor.ignoreTrimWhitespace. – Industry

Answer 3

On the top right corner in diff view, there is a "Show Leading/Trailing Whitespace Differences" button (¶, called pilcrow or paragraph mark) to trim whitespace:

Franklynfrankness

fwiw, this feature was initially added in VS Code 1.20.0 by the commit 8c91f01fda90388138414d414ace2b230d3331c8 . – Impudicity

Perhaps be the accepted best answer nowadays, though the OP asked the question years ago. Thank you! – Muldoon

This button is only available when you are checking a revision, not during a merge – Keikokeil

Answer 4

One idea is to format the documents using the same formatting standard and then compare the files.

Arsenide

This does not provide an answer to the question. Once you have sufficient reputation you will be able to comment on any post; instead, provide answers that don't require clarification from the asker. - From Review – Grantham

This does actually answer the question, and pretty well IMO. – Memento

Answer 5

If you are searching for a solution that doesn't bluntly ignore all whitespace changes, but only those that don't have an effect on your code, you should look into semantic/structural diffs. They use the grammar rules of the programming language to distinguish whether a whitespace is relevant (e.g. within a string) or optional (e.g. between function arguments).

I had a similar issue and ended up developing my own extension (SemanticDiff) that adds a structural diff mode to VS Code. Here is an example how it ignores whitespace changes:

You can get the extension from the marketplace. I am not aware of any other VS Code extension that implements such a feature.

Outside of VS Code, there are a few more options available, such as difftastic or diffsitter.

Retrospect

Correct, there are plenty of online tools as well and even offline like WinMerge – Hypothesis