Name

   colordiff -- a tool to colorize diff output

Synopsis

   colordiff [diff options] [colordiff options] {file1} {file2}

Description

   colordiff is a wrapper for diff and produces the same output as
   diff but with coloured syntax highlighting at the command line
   to improve readability. The output is similar to how a
   diff-generated patch might appear in Vim or Emacs with the
   appropriate syntax highlighting options enabled. The colour
   schemes can be read from a central configuration file or from a
   local user ~/.colordiffrc file.

   colordiff makes use of ANSI colours and as such will only work
   when ANSI colours can be used - typical examples are xterms and
   Eterms, as well as console sessions.

   colordiff has been tested on various flavours of Linux and
   under OpenBSD, but should be broadly portable to other systems.

Usage

   Use colordiff wherever you would normally use diff, or instead
   pipe output to colordiff:

   For example:
$ colordiff file1 file2
$ diff -u file1 file2 | colordiff

   You can pipe the output to 'less', using the '-R' option (some
   systems or terminal types may get better results using '-r'
   instead), which keeps the colour escape sequences, otherwise
   displayed incorrectly or discarded by 'less':
$ diff -u file1 file2 | colordiff | less -R

   If you want to force disable colour escape sequences (for
   example pipe the output to patch), you can use option
   '--color=no' to do so:
$ diff -u file1 file2 | colordiff --color=no | patch -p0 -d another-work
ing-dir

   If you have wdiff installed, colordiff will correctly colourise
   the added and removed text, provided that the '-n' option is
   given to wdiff:
$ wdiff -n file1 file2 | colordiff

   You may find it useful to make diff automatically call
   colordiff. Add the following line to ~/.bashrc (or equivalent):
alias diff=colordiff

   Any options passed to colordiff are passed through to diff
   except for the colordiff-specific option 'difftype', e.g.
colordiff --difftype=debdiff file1 file2

   Valid values for 'difftype' are: diff, diffc, diffu, diffy,
   wdiff, debdiff; these correspond to plain diffs, context diffs,
   unified diffs, side-by-side diffs, wdiff output and debdiff
   output respectively. Use these overrides when colordiff is not
   able to determine the diff-type automatically.

   Alternatively, a construct such as 'cvs diff SOMETHING |
   colordiff' can be included in ~/.bashrc as follows:
function cvsdiff () { cvs diff $@ | colordiff; }

   Or, combining the idea above using 'less':
function cvsdiff () { cvs diff $@ | colordiff |less -R; }

   Note that the function name, cvsdiff, can be customized.

   By default colordiff returns the exit code of the underlying
   diff invocation (if there is one), but there are some
   circumstances where it is useful to force colordiff's exit code
   to be zero: to do this use the option '--fakeexitcode':
colordiff --fakeexitcode ...

Options

   colordiff will send most options through to diff, but there are
   various colordiff-specific options which can be used:

   --help
          Show these colordiff-specific options

   --color=(yes|no)
          Force (or suppress) display of colours in output

   --color=patches=(yes|no)
          Force (or suppress) inclusion of colour codes in patch
          output

   --color-term-output-only
          Force colour to only appear in terminal output

   --difftype=DIFFTYPE
          Force difftype detection to specified format. DIFFTYPE
          can be: diff, diffc, diffu, diffy, debdiff, wdiff

   --(no)banner
          Show (or suppress) the colordiff banner

Files

   /etc/colordiffrc
          Central configuration file. User-specific settings can
          be enabled by copying this file to ~/.colordiffrc and
          making the appropriate changes.

   colordiffrc-lightbg
          Alternate configuration template for use with terminals
          having light backgrounds. Copy this to /etc/colordiffrc
          or ~/.colordiffrc and customize.

   colordiffrc-gitdiff
          Alternate configuration template for use with terminals
          having dark backgrounds, with colour defaults set to
          match the output of 'git diff'. Copy this to
          /etc/colordiffrc or ~/.colordiffrc and customize.

Bugs

   Bug reports and suggestions/patches to <davee@sungate.co.uk>
   please.
