Make Diffs Readable

Every time I look at a diff, I’m reminded of the gulf between me and Linus Torvalds. I just know he’s fluent in Finnish, English, and diff, but me? I know the diff syntax. I study the semantics. Heck — I even colorize my diffs. Doesn’t matter. Each time I view a diff, my head cocks to one side, and then the other, in utter bemusement. My hands stab tentatively right and left in flow with the <s and >s as if directing airplanes to their gates. I begin muttering like a paranoid schizophrenic, telling myself that “plus signs means addition, so those lines must be new, and those double @ signs mean an owl is staring at me, no, wait . . . .”

Apple recently featured a tool on its download site called MDR: Make Diffs Readable that transforms diffs from the inscrutability of Finnegans Wake to something along the lines of Fun with Dick and Jane. Now, before each commit, I type:

git diff | mdr

The output looks something like this:

No hand-waving, no head tilting, no confusion, no owls. I immediately understand what changed and what differences I’m committing. Great freeware tool from Half Full Heart.

Sadly, now that I see my code more clearly, I realize the gulf between me and Torvalds is wider than I realized.