.\"     Title: colordiff
.\"    Author: 
.\" Generator: DocBook XSL Stylesheets v1.73.2 <http://docbook.sf.net/>
.\"      Date: 01/25/2009
.\"    Manual: 
.\"    Source: 
.\"
.TH "COLORDIFF" "1" "01/25/2009" "" ""
.\" disable hyphenation
.nh
.\" disable justification (adjust text to left margin only)
.ad l
.SH "NAME"
colordiff \- a tool to colorize diff output
.SH "SYNOPSIS"
.HP 10
\fBcolordiff\fR [\fI\fBdiff\fR\fR\fI\ options\fR] [\fIcolordiff\fR\fI\ options\fR] {\fIfile1\fR} {\fIfile2\fR}
.SH "DESCRIPTION"
.PP
colordiff
is a wrapper for
\fBdiff\fR
and produces the same output as
\fBdiff\fR
but with coloured syntax highlighting at the command line to improve readability\&. The output is similar to how a
\fBdiff\fR\-generated patch might appear in
Vim
or
Emacs
with the appropriate syntax highlighting options enabled\&. The colour schemes can be read from a central configuration file or from a local user
\fI~/\&.colordiffrc\fR
file\&.
.PP
colordiff
makes use of ANSI colours and as such will only work when ANSI colours can be used \- typical examples are xterms and Eterms, as well as console sessions\&.
.PP
colordiff
has been tested on various flavours of Linux and under OpenBSD, but should be broadly portable to other systems\&.
.SH "USAGE"
.PP
Use
colordiff
wherever you would normally use
\fBdiff\fR, or pipe output to
colordiff:
.PP
For example:
.sp
.RS 4
.nf
$ colordiff file1 file2
$ diff \-u file1 file2 | colordiff
.fi
.RE
.PP
You can pipe the output to \'less\', using the \'\-R\' option (some systems or terminal types may get better results using \'\-r\' instead), which keeps the colour escape sequences, otherwise displayed incorrectly or discarded by \'less\':
.sp
.RS 4
.nf
$ diff \-u file1 file2 | colordiff | less \-R
.fi
.RE
.PP
If you have
\fBwdiff\fR
installed, colordiff will correctly colourise the added and removed text, provided that the \'\-n\' option is given to
\fBwdiff\fR:
.sp
.RS 4
.nf
$ wdiff \-n file1 file2 | colordiff
.fi
.RE
.PP
You may find it useful to make
\fBdiff\fR
automatically call
\fBcolordiff\fR\&. Add the following line to
\fI~/\&.bashrc\fR
(or equivalent):
.sp
.RS 4
.nf
alias diff=colordiff
.fi
.RE
.PP
Any options passed to
colordiff
are passed through to
\fBdiff\fR
except for the colordiff\-specific option \'difftype\', e\&.g\&.
.sp
.RS 4
.nf
colordiff \-\-difftype=debdiff file1 file2
.fi
.RE
.PP
Valid values for \'difftype\' are: diff, diffc, diffu, diffy, wdiff, debdiff; these correspond to plain diffs, context diffs, unified diffs, side\-by\-side diffs, wdiff output and debdiff output respectively\&. Use these overrides when colordiff is not able to determine the diff\-type automatically\&.
.PP
Alternatively, a construct such as \'cvs diff SOMETHING | colordiff\' can be included in
\fI~/\&.bashrc\fR
as follows:
.sp
.RS 4
.nf
function cvsdiff () { cvs diff $@ | colordiff; }
.fi
.RE
.PP
Or, combining the idea above using \'less\':
.sp
.RS 4
.nf
function cvsdiff () { cvs diff $@ | colordiff |less \-R; }
.fi
.RE
.PP
Note that the function name, cvsdiff, can be customized\&.
.SH "FILES"
.PP
\fI/etc/colordiffrc\fR
.RS 4
Central configuration file\&. User\-specific settings can be enabled by copying this file to
\fI~/\&.colordiffrc\fR
and making the appropriate changes\&.
.RE
.PP
\fIcolordiffrc\-lightbg\fR
.RS 4
Alternate configuration template for use with terminals having light backgrounds\&. Copy this to /etc/colordiffrc or ~/\&.colordiffrc and customize\&.
.RE
.SH "BUGS"
.PP
Bug reports and suggestions/patches to
<davee@sungate\&.co\&.uk>
please\&.
.SH "AUTHOR"
.PP
colordiff
is written and maintained by Dave Ewart
<davee@sungate\&.co\&.uk>\&. This manual page and the source XML was written by Graham Wilson
<graham@mknod\&.org>
for Debian and is maintained by the author\&. Dave Ewart maintains the Debian package.