git difftool, open all diff files immediately, not in serial

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The default git diff behavior is to open each diff file in serial (wait for previous file to be closed before opening next file).

I'm looking for a way to open all the files at once - in BeyondCompare for example this would open all the files in tabs within the same BC window.

This would make it easier to review a complex set of changes; flick back and forwards between the diff files and ignore unimportant files.

Ionization answered 3/8, 2009 at 0:52 Comment(5)

"git diff" or "git difftool"? You might want to post request on (open for all, and with varous web interface) git mailing list: [email protected] – Overstuffed 3/8, 2009 at 10:10

I'm using "git difftool" to trigger external diff application. Thanks for the mailing list idea. – Ionization 4/8, 2009 at 3:28

It would be helpful to know the platform. On a Unix-based platform, I would write a script to perform the diff and instruct git to use that script. In the script, I would simply run the diff in the background then let the script die. – Baltimore 6/8, 2009 at 16:33

Windows platform, but thanks for the ideas Chris. – Ionization 7/8, 2009 at 0:0

For mergetool: stackoverflow.com/questions/39259116/… – Sidestep 4/4, 2017 at 16:6

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71

Here's what I settled on...

Copy the following code to a file called git-diffall (no extension):

#!/bin/sh
git diff --name-only "$@" | while read filename; do
    git difftool "$@" --no-prompt "$filename" &
done

Place the file in the cmd folder of your git install dir (eg C:\Program Files (x86)\Git\cmd)

And use like you would git diff:

git diffall
git diffall HEAD
git diffall --cached 
git diffall rev1..rev2
etc...

Notes: The key to it is the & param which tells the external diff command to run in a background task so files are processed immediately. In the case of BeyondCompare this opens one screen with each file in its own tab.

Ionization answered 3/8, 2009 at 0:53 Comment(12)

Thanks for posting. Unfortunatley, it doesn't work with WinMerge's -s option. All of the temp files except the first get deleted before WinMerge gets to look at them. – Hapten 19/4, 2010 at 16:24

Carlos: I use WinMerge with Git. My approach was to add a 'sleep 1' after launching WinMerge (which in my case seems to already launch "in the background" - no need for &). This way the temporary file lives just long enough for WinMerge to pick it up once (except in weird cases). It does also mean that it takes 1 second per file to open them all. It's a nasty hack (I would never present it as an "answer"!), but an easy, fairly effective one. – Idealist 20/8, 2010 at 16:30

Thanks for the script! Works well with Araxis Merge on Mac with a slight adjustment to open Araxis first and then sleep for a second. Araxis also needs to be setup to open new merges in a tab. – Desimone 10/3, 2011 at 0:31

Nice script, but I have 2 issues with it: It opens a new window for each file, which I don't like. Granted not every diff viewer supports it, but I want all diffs in the same window as tabs. The other issue is it doesn't work with text-only diff viewers like vimdiff. I suggest you add the --gui option to the difftool command line. – Lackadaisical 25/7, 2011 at 15:23

For use on Linux, with Git 2.x, I had to make a slight modification: change "$filename" to "../$filename". Then it worked perfectly with Beyond Compare – Wichman 19/11, 2015 at 15:2

@DaveC in the original thread it says to "store the file in the cmd folder of your git install" and proceeds with an example on windows. Where did you store the "git-diffall" file in Linux? – Cannular 13/7, 2017 at 15:4

@Cannular I put the git-diffall script in a directory in my path. – Wichman 3/8, 2017 at 17:43

Do we need to restart windows after adding git-diffall file to C:\Program Files\Git\cmd folder? I did exactly as instructed but upon doing $ git diffall git: 'diffall' is not a git command. See 'git --help'. Did you mean this? difftool – Marseilles 12/9, 2017 at 11:7

It is quite possible that C:\Program Files (x86)\Git\cmd is not in the path. In which case the git-diffall file needs to be placed in a folder that is in the path. eg: C:\SPB_Data\bin. In my case git was actually in the path /mingw64/bin/git – Marseilles 12/9, 2017 at 11:30

better than creating that file is to make this a git alias with shell function:

diffall = !"f() { git diff --name-only "$@" | while read filename; do git difftool "$@" --no-prompt "$filename" & done }; f #"

. Nice solution btw – Uird 27/1, 2020 at 14:41

I wanted to be able to run this command anywhere in my repo, so I added this line at the beginning to calculate the root of the repo: GIT_ROOT=$(git rev-parse --show-toplevel) and then changed the difftool line so that the filename was prefixed with the root: git difftool "$@" --no-prompt "$GIT_ROOT/$filename" & – Normand 18/10, 2021 at 16:42

This does not work for me in Linux. The problem is that in Linux the temporary file generated by git diff is immediately deleted after git diff quit, so the external tool won't be able to read the generated temporary file. – Joachim 14/4, 2022 at 20:29

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Starting with git v1.7.11, you can use git difftool --dir-diff to perform a directory diff.

This feature works well with Meld 3.14.2 for example, and lets you browse all modified files:

git difftool --dir-diff --tool=meld HEAD~ HEAD

This is a handy Bash function:

git-diff-meld() (
  git difftool --dir-diff --tool=meld "${1:-HEAD~}" "${2:-HEAD}"
)

The answer that follows applies to git installations older than v1.7.11.

This same question was asked on the git mail list.

I put together a shell script based on that email thread which performs a directory diff between arbitrary commits.

Starting with git v1.7.10, the git-diffall script is included in the contrib of the standard git installation.

For versions before v1.7.10, you can install from the git-diffall project on GitHub.

Here is the project description:

The git-diffall script provides a directory based diff mechanism for git. The script relies on the diff.tool configuration option to determine what diff viewer is used.

This script is compatible with all the forms used to specify a range of revisions to diff:

1) git diffall: shows diff between working tree and staged changes
2) git diffall --cached [<commit>]: shows diff between staged changes and HEAD (or other named commit)
3) git diffall <commit>: shows diff between working tree and named commit
4) git diffall <commit> <commit>: show diff between two named commits
5) git diffall <commit>..<commit>: same as above
6) git diffall <commit>...<commit>: show the changes on the branch containing and up to the second , starting at a common ancestor of both <commit>

Note: all forms take an optional path limiter [--] [<path>]

This script is based on an example provided by Thomas Rast on the Git list.

Michaella answered 30/4, 2010 at 17:4 Comment(12)

What's the difference between git-diffall and github.com/wmanley/git-meld? I tried both and they seem to provide identical functionality at first glance. – Lackadaisical 25/7, 2011 at 15:9

I mean apart from git-diffall respecting the difftool.tool setting, whereas git-meld has meld as hard coded as the diff tool. – Lackadaisical 25/7, 2011 at 15:19

I for one greatly appreciate your script. Frankly, I can't fathom why Git doesn't behave the right way in this regard (Mercurial does, and has done so for years), nor can I fathom the lack of interest from the Git community. – Bunder 19/12, 2011 at 23:29

This is the correct answer to the question. Super-easy install, works like a charm. – Leathers 16/5, 2012 at 15:22

Regarding the git difftool --dir-diff command, be sure that your 3rd party tool blocks. If it returns immediately, git will tear down the temp folders before it finishes comparing them. For the Beyond Compare tool, this means to be sure your config is pointing to bcompare.exe, not bcomp.exe. – Karlenekarlens 26/7, 2012 at 23:14

Update (regarding git difftool --dir-diff and Beyond Compare): I contacted Scooter Software (authors of Beyond Compare) and they say that bcompare.exe isn't a supported solution and may cause problems if there is more than one diff open at a time. They plan to add support for folder diffs to bcomp.exe in a future version (in the meantime, I'll continue using bcompare.exe as an unsupported workaround). – Karlenekarlens 27/7, 2012 at 17:40

@PeterRust Since your comment was posted on '12, I am wondering what is the status regarding Beyond Compare in '15? – Alkene 24/3, 2015 at 8:50

@coin I just tested with Beyond Compare 4 and --dir-diff appears to work with the supported bcomp.exe. – Karlenekarlens 25/3, 2015 at 13:38

@PeterRust In the meantime I also investigated on Beyond Compare 3. It works but the temporary files created by git are unavailable on Beyond Compare 4 since the Perl script git-difftool finished before BC3. I quickly tried to bypass git-difftool with this snippet: gist.github.com/nowox/0ee91465d94a52f6cd3e I think to implement it more seriously on my Git install – Alkene 25/3, 2015 at 14:21

I did not have success with BC4 and git difftool --dir-diff but github.com/thenigan/git-diffall does integrate nicely with BC4. FYI I'm on Mac OS. – Phosphor 29/5, 2015 at 9:27

Just commenting to say that --dir-diff works perfectly with Meld. From there, it will let you select and view diffs for individual files. – Kunlun 30/6, 2015 at 18:58

After closing the difftool, the changes are not reflected to the working dir. This is working for git difftool --dir-diff – Mafala 25/9, 2018 at 12:36

I

71

Here's what I settled on...

Copy the following code to a file called git-diffall (no extension):

#!/bin/sh
git diff --name-only "$@" | while read filename; do
    git difftool "$@" --no-prompt "$filename" &
done

Place the file in the cmd folder of your git install dir (eg C:\Program Files (x86)\Git\cmd)

And use like you would git diff:

git diffall
git diffall HEAD
git diffall --cached 
git diffall rev1..rev2
etc...