Git diff: Deemphasizing code that was only moved around

Posted Over 3 years ago. Visible to the public. Repeats.

In long diffs, it can become impossible to spot small changes in larger blocks of moved code. This may be either a method that was moved from the top to the bottom of a file, or a long test file that was split in many.

Fortunately, Git offers a special highlighting mode that directs the reader's attention to relevant code parts:

git diff --color-moved=dimmed-zebra

It will dim lines that were moved around without changes, and highlight changed lines.
To easily use dimmed-zebra mode, configure an alias:

# ~/.gitconfig
[alias]
  dz = diff --color-moved=dimmed-zebra

Example taken from Stackoverflow Show archive.org snapshot :
Git dimmed-zebra

Dominik Schöler
makandra.de
Say thanks4
Last edit
10 months ago
Dominik Schöler
License
Source code in this card is licensed under the MIT License.

Related cards:

Configuring Git with .gitconfig

Basic configuration

Please keep this config simple. It should be a starting point for new developers learning Git.

[user]
  name = Your Name
  email = your.name@domain.com

[branch]
  sort = -committerdate
[color]
   ui = auto
[color "bra...

Git: Parsing large diffs as a human

I just finished migrating a project from the Asset Pipeline to Webpacker, this is what my diff to master looks like:

5.825 files changed, 44.805 insertio...

How to push to Git without running CI on GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, or Travis CI

If a project ist configured to spawn CI runners for tests or deployment when pushing to the Repo, a habit of pushing WIP commits regularly may conflict with that.
Here are two solutions that allow you to keep pushing whenever you feel like it.

#...

Git restore vs. reset for reverting previous revisions

The git doc states on the difference of these two commands:

  • git-restore[1] is about restoring files in the working tree from either the index or another commit. This command does not up...

Git: How to show only filenames for a diff

When you want to do a git diff but do not care about the full diff and just want to know which files changed, use the --name-only switch:

$ git diff --name-only
app/controllers/sessions_controller.rb
app/models/user.rb
feature...

How to diff two strings in Ruby

When you need to use diff in either some Ruby code or your Rails app, use the differ gem.

puts Differ.diff "foo", "boo"
# => {"boo" >> "foo"}

Usage

There are several variants available, all us...

Rails developers: Have better context in Git diffs

Git diffs show the surrounding contexts for diff hunks. It does so by applying regular expressions to find the beginning of a context. When it comes to Ruby, however, it will not find method heads and travel up to the class definition:

@@...

Force GitHub Pull Requests to update the diff against its target branch

When you have a Pull Request on GitHub that includes commits from another Pull Request, you will still see them after the "child" PR has been merged. Unfortunately, GitHub won't automatically update the diff (or commit list).

Here is what worked ...

How to make your git aliases work with both master and main

The linked article found a simple way to rewrite legacy git aliases to make them work with differently named default branches

  • Step 1: Decide which is the most common default bran...

Git: How to configure git to push only your current branch

You can change which branches will be pushed when saying git push. Our recommendation is to set it to current.

From the git-config documentation:

push.default
: ^
Defines the action ...

Posted by Dominik Schöler to makandra dev (2021-01-04 07:06)
This website uses short-lived cookies to improve usability.
or learn more