Use Unix diff from console

Use Unix diff from console

Monday, February 26, 2018 Pablo Santos 0 Comments

While we invest lots of efforts improving our built-in diff, semantic diff and the graphical merge tools, there are times where you really need to run a diff in a terminal.

How can you configure unix diff to be your diff tool?

Setup your diff tool editing client.conf

All you need to do is to edit your client.conf as follows:

In this case I set up the Unix diff on my Fedora, but of course you could be using sdiff or any other.

Use a separate client.conf for specific purposes

You can simply edit client.conf and modify the diff.

But, if you want to use a different diff for CLI than GUI, then probably you'll be better served by having 2 different client.conf files.

In my case, note I used the following:

cm diff the_file -clientconf=/home/pablo/.plastic4/client.conf.txtdiff

client.conf.txtdiff is the modified client.conf where I setup the command line diff.

Conclusion

Nothing really new under the sun here, just remind you that while we don't ship a console-based diff tool, it takes 1 minute to configure one.

Pablo Santos

I'm the CTO and Founder at Códice.
I've been leading Plastic SCM since 2005. My passion is helping teams work better through version control.
I had the opportunity to see teams from many different industries at work while I helped them improving their version control practices.
I really enjoy teaching (I've been a University professor for 6+ years) and sharing my experience in talks and articles.
And I love simple code. You can reach me at @psluaces.