Enable git-style colour output in regular diff on Mac OS X

README.md

Enable git-style colour output in regular diff

Mac OS X

1. Install colordiff using Homebrew:

    brew install colordiff
   

2. Add function to your ~/.bash_profile:

    cat <<EOF >>~/.bash_profile
   
    function diff {
        colordiff -u "$@" | less -RF
    }
    EOF
   

3. Change default output colours to match git:

    cat <<EOF >~/.colordiffrc
    newtext=green
    oldtext=red
    diffstuff=cyan
    EOF
   

4. Reload:

    . ~/.bash_profile
   

5. Profit.

---

Notes on switches:

• -u in diff means: unified diff
• -R in less means: show raw escape codes (so we can see the colour)
• -F in less means: quit if entire output fits on one screen

Just checked git diff with two files not belonging to any a Git repo (current directory is not a repo tree either), and it works for me. This is with Git 2.19.1 on macOS.

One thing that colordiff supports and git diff doesn't is a feature I use very often: diff'ing the output of commands:

$ colordiff <(echo hello, world) <(echo goodbye, cruel world)
1c1
< hello, world
---
> goodbye, cruel world

whereas

$ git diff <(echo hello, world) <(echo goodbye, cruel world)
error: /dev/fd/63: unsupported file type
fatal: cannot hash /dev/fd/63

I suppose it's not related to git but if you want similar diffs and have VIM there is another solution shown here.

diff file1 file2 | vim -R -
-or-
diff file1 file2 | view -.

The view command is same as vim -R.