Nov
24

Make Diffs Readable

By Rob Warner // Development, iOS // 8 Comments

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.

Author: Rob Warner

Rob Warner has written 161 articles for us.

8 Comments to “Make Diffs Readable”

social workers November 26, 2010 at 12:59 PM

This is such a great resource that you are providing and you give it away for free. I enjoy seeing websites that understand the value of providing a prime resource for free. I truly loved reading your post. Thanks!

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Ellen Merring November 27, 2010 at 10:27 AM

Really nice post,thank you, best website ever

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Abby Warley January 6, 2011 at 3:02 AM

Very detailed post can i translate into Spanish for my blogs readers? If thats OK what type of acknowledgement would you prefer?

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- Rob Warner January 6, 2011 at 5:57 AM
  
  Go ahead and translate, and link back to this post.
  
  Reply
Marcus January 21, 2011 at 12:40 AM

Nice! I’ve been using DiffMerge (http://www.sourcegear.com/diffmerge/screenshots.html) which probably has more features but it’s not as fast or clean. I’ll give this one a try.

Also, I didn’t see it mentioned in your post on your favorite apps, have you tried GitX? The main homepage is here – http://gitx.frim.nl/ and this is a link to a fork with some additional features: https://github.com/brotherbard/gitx

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Rob Warner January 21, 2011 at 3:52 PM

I’ve tried GitX, Tower, and got the beta for GitMac. I haven’t yet figured out why I’d use a gui instead of cli for git, though.

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Marcus January 21, 2011 at 4:01 PM

Generally I use the cli for staging and commiting, but I use gitx occasionally for visualizing branches and merges and as a quick way to cycle through commits.

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Rob Warner March 1, 2011 at 10:15 AM

OK, I just bought Tower. It seems a little awkward not to use cli, but I like being able to visualize things more clearly.

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