kitty-diff

A fast side-by-side diff tool with syntax highlighting and images

.. highlight:: sh

Major Features

.. container:: major-features

* Displays diffs side-by-side in the kitty terminal

* Does syntax highlighting of the displayed diffs, asynchronously, for
  maximum speed

* Displays images as well as text diffs, even over SSH

* Does recursive directory diffing

.. figure:: ../screenshots/diff.png :alt: Screenshot, showing a sample diff :align: center :width: 100%

Screenshot, showing a sample diff

Installation

Simply :ref:install kitty <quickstart>.

Usage

In the kitty terminal, run::

kitten diff file1 file2

to see the diff between :file:file1 and :file:file2.

Create an alias in your shell's startup file to shorten the command, for example:

.. code-block:: sh

alias d="kitten diff"

Now all you need to do to diff two files is::

d file1 file2

You can also pass directories instead of files to see the recursive diff of the directory contents.

Keyboard controls

=========================== =========================== Action Shortcut =========================== =========================== Quit :kbd:Q Scroll line up :kbd:K, :kbd:Up Scroll line down :kbd:J, :kbd:Down Scroll page up :kbd:PgUp Scroll page down :kbd:PgDn Scroll to top :kbd:Home Scroll to bottom :kbd:End Scroll to next page :kbd:Space, :kbd:PgDn, :kbd:Ctrl+F Scroll to previous page :kbd:PgUp, :kbd:Ctrl+B Scroll down half page :kbd:Ctrl+D Scroll up half page :kbd:Ctrl+U Scroll to next change :kbd:N Scroll to previous change :kbd:P Increase lines of context :kbd:+ Decrease lines of context :kbd:- All lines of context :kbd:A Restore default context :kbd:= Search forwards :kbd:/ Search backwards :kbd:? Clear search or exit :kbd:Esc Scroll to next match :kbd:>, :kbd:. Scroll to previous match :kbd:<, :kbd:, Copy selection to clipboard :kbd:y Copy selection or exit :kbd:Ctrl+C =========================== ===========================

Integrating with git

Add the following to :file:~/.gitconfig:

.. code-block:: ini

[diff]
    tool = kitty
    guitool = kitty.gui
[difftool]
    prompt = false
    trustExitCode = true
[difftool "kitty"]
    cmd = kitten diff $LOCAL $REMOTE
[difftool "kitty.gui"]
    cmd = kitten diff $LOCAL $REMOTE

Now to use kitty-diff to view git diffs, you can simply do::

git difftool --no-symlinks --dir-diff

Once again, creating an alias for this command is useful.

Why does this work only in kitty?

The diff kitten makes use of various features that are :doc:kitty only </protocol-extensions>, such as the :doc:kitty graphics protocol </graphics-protocol>, the :doc:extended keyboard protocol </keyboard-protocol>, etc. It also leverages terminal program infrastructure I created for all of kitty's other kittens to reduce the amount of code needed (the entire implementation is under 3000 lines of code).

And fundamentally, it's kitty only because I wrote it for myself, and I am highly unlikely to use any other terminals :)

Configuration

You can configure the colors used, keyboard shortcuts, the diff implementation, the default lines of context, etc. by creating a :file:diff.conf file in your :ref:kitty config folder <confloc>. See below for the supported configuration directives.

.. include:: /generated/conf-kitten-diff.rst

.. include:: /generated/cli-kitten-diff.rst

Sample diff.conf

You can download a sample :file:diff.conf file with all default settings and comments describing each setting by clicking: :download:sample diff.conf </generated/conf/diff.conf>.