diff.adoc

diff.autoRefreshIndex

When using git diff to compare with work tree files, do not consider stat-only changes as changed. Instead, silently run git update-index --refresh to update the cached stat information for paths whose contents in the work tree match the contents in the index. This option defaults to true. Note that this affects only git diff Porcelain, and not lower level diff commands such as git diff-files.

diff.dirstat

A comma separated list of --dirstat parameters specifying the default behavior of the --dirstat option to linkgit:git-diff[1] and friends. The defaults can be overridden on the command line (using --dirstat=<param>,…​). The fallback defaults (when not changed by diff.dirstat) are changes,noncumulative,3. The following parameters are available:

changes

Compute the dirstat numbers by counting the lines that have been removed from the source, or added to the destination. This ignores the amount of pure code movements within a file. In other words, rearranging lines in a file is not counted as much as other changes. This is the default behavior when no parameter is given.

lines

Compute the dirstat numbers by doing the regular line-based diff analysis, and summing the removed/added line counts. (For binary files, count 64-byte chunks instead, since binary files have no natural concept of lines). This is a more expensive --dirstat behavior than the changes behavior, but it does count rearranged lines within a file as much as other changes. The resulting output is consistent with what you get from the other --*stat options.

files

Compute the dirstat numbers by counting the number of files changed. Each changed file counts equally in the dirstat analysis. This is the computationally cheapest --dirstat behavior, since it does not have to look at the file contents at all.

cumulative

Count changes in a child directory for the parent directory as well. Note that when using cumulative, the sum of the percentages reported may exceed 100%. The default (non-cumulative) behavior can be specified with the noncumulative parameter.

<limit>

An integer parameter specifies a cut-off percent (3% by default). Directories contributing less than this percentage of the changes are not shown in the output.

Example: The following will count changed files, while ignoring directories with less than 10% of the total amount of changed files, and accumulating child directory counts in the parent directories: files,10,cumulative.

diff.statNameWidth

Limit the width of the filename part in --stat output. If set, applies to all commands generating --stat output except format-patch.

diff.statGraphWidth

Limit the width of the graph part in --stat output. If set, applies to all commands generating --stat output except format-patch.

diff.context

Generate diffs with <n> lines of context instead of the default of 3. This value is overridden by the -U option.

diff.interHunkContext

Show the context between diff hunks, up to the specified number of lines, thereby fusing the hunks that are close to each other. This value serves as the default for the --inter-hunk-context command line option.

diff.external

If this config variable is set, diff generation is not performed using the internal diff machinery, but using the given command. Can be overridden with the GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF environment variable. The command is called with parameters as described under "git Diffs" in linkgit:git[1]. Note: if you want to use an external diff program only on a subset of your files, you might want to use linkgit:gitattributes[5] instead.

diff.trustExitCode

If this boolean value is set to true then the diff.external command is expected to return exit code 0 if it considers the input files to be equal or 1 if it considers them to be different, like diff(1). If it is set to false, which is the default, then the command is expected to return exit code 0 regardless of equality. Any other exit code causes Git to report a fatal error.

diff.ignoreSubmodules

Sets the default value of --ignore-submodules. Note that this affects only git diff Porcelain, and not lower level diff commands such as git diff-files. git checkout and git switch also honor this setting when reporting uncommitted changes. Setting it to all disables the submodule summary normally shown by git commit and git status when status.submoduleSummary is set unless it is overridden by using the --ignore-submodules command-line option. The git submodule commands are not affected by this setting. By default this is set to untracked so that any untracked submodules are ignored.

diff.mnemonicPrefix

If set, git diff uses a prefix pair that is different from the standard a/ and b/ depending on what is being compared. When this configuration is in effect, reverse diff output also swaps the order of the prefixes:

git diff

compares the (i)ndex and the (w)ork tree;

git diff HEAD

compares a (c)ommit and the (w)ork tree;

git diff --cached

compares a (c)ommit and the (i)ndex;

git diff HEAD:<file1> <file2>

compares an (o)bject and a (w)ork tree entity;

git diff --no-index <a> <b>

compares two non-git things <a> and <b>.

diff.noPrefix

If set, git diff does not show any source or destination prefix.

diff.srcPrefix

If set, git diff uses this source prefix. Defaults to a/.

diff.dstPrefix

If set, git diff uses this destination prefix. Defaults to b/.

diff.relative

If set to true, git diff does not show changes outside of the directory and show pathnames relative to the current directory.

diff.orderFile

File indicating how to order files within a diff. See the -O option to linkgit:git-diff[1] for details. If diff.orderFile is a relative pathname, it is treated as relative to the top of the working tree.

diff.renameLimit

The number of files to consider in the exhaustive portion of copy/rename detection; equivalent to the git diff option -l. If not set, the default value is currently 1000. This setting has no effect if rename detection is turned off.

diff.renameThreshold

The minimum similarity threshold for rename detection; equivalent to the git diff option -M. The value is a percentage (e.g. 50%), or a fraction between 0 and 1 (e.g. 0.5). If not set, the default is 50%. This setting has no effect if rename detection is turned off.

diff.renames

Whether and how Git detects renames. If set to false, rename detection is disabled. If set to true, basic rename detection is enabled. If set to copies or copy, Git will detect copies, as well. Defaults to true. Note that this affects only git diff Porcelain like linkgit:git-diff[1] and linkgit:git-log[1], and not lower level commands such as linkgit:git-diff-files[1].

diff.suppressBlankEmpty

A boolean to inhibit the standard behavior of printing a space before each empty output line. Defaults to false.

diff.submodule

Specify the format in which differences in submodules are shown. The short format just shows the names of the commits at the beginning and end of the range. The log format lists the commits in the range like linkgit:git-submodule[1] summary does. The diff format shows an inline diff of the changed contents of the submodule. Defaults to short.

diff.wordRegex

A POSIX Extended Regular Expression used to determine what is a "word" when performing word-by-word difference calculations. Character sequences that match the regular expression are "words", all other characters are ignorable whitespace.

diff.<driver>.command

The custom diff driver command. See linkgit:gitattributes[5] for details.

diff.<driver>.trustExitCode

If this boolean value is set to true then the diff.<driver>.command command is expected to return exit code 0 if it considers the input files to be equal or 1 if it considers them to be different, like diff(1). If it is set to false, which is the default, then the command is expected to return exit code 0 regardless of equality. Any other exit code causes Git to report a fatal error.

diff.<driver>.xfuncname

The regular expression that the diff driver should use to recognize the hunk header. A built-in pattern may also be used. See linkgit:gitattributes[5] for details.

diff.<driver>.binary

Set this option to true to make the diff driver treat files as binary. See linkgit:gitattributes[5] for details.

diff.<driver>.textconv

The command that the diff driver should call to generate the text-converted version of a file. The result of the conversion is used to generate a human-readable diff. See linkgit:gitattributes[5] for details.

diff.<driver>.wordRegex

The regular expression that the diff driver should use to split words in a line. See linkgit:gitattributes[5] for details.

diff.<driver>.cachetextconv

Set this option to true to make the diff driver cache the text conversion outputs. See linkgit:gitattributes[5] for details.

diff.indentHeuristic

Set this option to false to disable the default heuristics that shift diff hunk boundaries to make patches easier to read.

diff.algorithm

Choose a diff algorithm. The variants are as follows:

default

myers

The basic greedy diff algorithm. Currently, this is the default.

minimal

Spend extra time to make sure the smallest possible diff is produced.

patience

Use "patience diff" algorithm when generating patches.

histogram

This algorithm extends the patience algorithm to "support low-occurrence common elements".

diff.wsErrorHighlight

Highlight whitespace errors in the context, old or new lines of the diff. Multiple values are separated by comma, none resets previous values, default reset the list to new and all is a shorthand for old,new,context. The whitespace errors are colored with color.diff.whitespace. The command line option --ws-error-highlight=<kind> overrides this setting.

diff.colorMoved

If set to either a valid <mode> or a true value, moved lines in a diff are colored differently. For details of valid modes see --color-moved in linkgit:git-diff[1]. If simply set to true the default color mode will be used. When set to false, moved lines are not colored.

diff.colorMovedWS

When moved lines are colored using e.g. the diff.colorMoved setting, this option controls the mode how spaces are treated. For details of valid modes see --color-moved-ws in linkgit:git-diff[1].