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NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | CONFIGURATION | SEE ALSO | GIT | COLOPHON |
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GIT-DIFFTOOL(1) Git Manual GIT-DIFFTOOL(1)
git-difftool - Show changes using common diff tools
git difftool [<options>] [<commit> [<commit>]] [--] [<path>...]
git difftool is a Git command that allows you to compare and edit
files between revisions using common diff tools. git difftool is a
frontend to git diff and accepts the same options and arguments.
See git-diff(1).
-d, --dir-diff
Copy the modified files to a temporary location and perform a
directory diff on them. This mode never prompts before
launching the diff tool.
-y, --no-prompt
Do not prompt before launching a diff tool.
--prompt
Prompt before each invocation of the diff tool. This is the
default behaviour; the option is provided to override any
configuration settings.
--rotate-to=<file>
Start showing the diff for the given path, the paths before it
will move to the end and output.
--skip-to=<file>
Start showing the diff for the given path, skipping all the
paths before it.
-t <tool>, --tool=<tool>
Use the diff tool specified by <tool>. Valid values include
emerge, kompare, meld, and vimdiff. Run git difftool
--tool-help for the list of valid <tool> settings.
If a diff tool is not specified, git difftool will use the
configuration variable diff.tool. If the configuration
variable diff.tool is not set, git difftool will pick a
suitable default.
You can explicitly provide a full path to the tool by setting
the configuration variable difftool.<tool>.path. For example,
you can configure the absolute path to kdiff3 by setting
difftool.kdiff3.path. Otherwise, git difftool assumes the tool
is available in PATH.
Instead of running one of the known diff tools, git difftool
can be customized to run an alternative program by specifying
the command line to invoke in a configuration variable
difftool.<tool>.cmd.
When git difftool is invoked with this tool (either through
the -t or --tool option or the diff.tool configuration
variable) the configured command line will be invoked with the
following variables available: $LOCAL is set to the name of
the temporary file containing the contents of the diff
pre-image and $REMOTE is set to the name of the temporary file
containing the contents of the diff post-image. $MERGED is
the name of the file which is being compared. $BASE is
provided for compatibility with custom merge tool commands and
has the same value as $MERGED.
--tool-help
Print a list of diff tools that may be used with --tool.
--[no-]symlinks
git difftool's default behavior is to create symlinks to the
working tree when run in --dir-diff mode and the right-hand
side of the comparison yields the same content as the file in
the working tree.
Specifying --no-symlinks instructs git difftool to create
copies instead. --no-symlinks is the default on Windows.
-x <command>, --extcmd=<command>
Specify a custom command for viewing diffs. git-difftool
ignores the configured defaults and runs <command> $LOCAL
$REMOTE when this option is specified. Additionally, $BASE is
set in the environment.
-g, --[no-]gui
When git-difftool is invoked with the -g or --gui option the
default diff tool will be read from the configured
diff.guitool variable instead of diff.tool. This may be
selected automatically using the configuration variable
difftool.guiDefault. The --no-gui option can be used to
override these settings. If diff.guitool is not set, we will
fallback in the order of merge.guitool, diff.tool, merge.tool
until a tool is found.
--[no-]trust-exit-code
Errors reported by the diff tool are ignored by default. Use
--trust-exit-code to make git-difftool exit when an invoked
diff tool returns a non-zero exit code.
git-difftool will forward the exit code of the invoked tool
when --trust-exit-code is used.
See git-diff(1) for the full list of supported options.
git difftool falls back to git mergetool config variables when the
difftool equivalents have not been defined.
Everything above this line in this section isn’t included from the
git-config(1) documentation. The content that follows is the same
as what’s found there:
diff.tool
Controls which diff tool is used by git-difftool(1). This
variable overrides the value configured in merge.tool. The
list below shows the valid built-in values. Any other value is
treated as a custom diff tool and requires that a
corresponding difftool.<tool>.cmd variable is defined.
diff.guitool
Controls which diff tool is used by git-difftool(1) when the
-g/--gui flag is specified. This variable overrides the value
configured in merge.guitool. The list below shows the valid
built-in values. Any other value is treated as a custom diff
tool and requires that a corresponding difftool.<guitool>.cmd
variable is defined.
araxis
Use Araxis Merge (requires a graphical session)
bc
Use Beyond Compare (requires a graphical session)
bc3
Use Beyond Compare (requires a graphical session)
bc4
Use Beyond Compare (requires a graphical session)
codecompare
Use Code Compare (requires a graphical session)
deltawalker
Use DeltaWalker (requires a graphical session)
diffmerge
Use DiffMerge (requires a graphical session)
diffuse
Use Diffuse (requires a graphical session)
ecmerge
Use ECMerge (requires a graphical session)
emerge
Use Emacs' Emerge
examdiff
Use ExamDiff Pro (requires a graphical session)
guiffy
Use Guiffy’s Diff Tool (requires a graphical session)
gvimdiff
Use gVim (requires a graphical session)
kdiff3
Use KDiff3 (requires a graphical session)
kompare
Use Kompare (requires a graphical session)
meld
Use Meld (requires a graphical session)
nvimdiff
Use Neovim
opendiff
Use FileMerge (requires a graphical session)
p4merge
Use HelixCore P4Merge (requires a graphical session)
smerge
Use Sublime Merge (requires a graphical session)
tkdiff
Use TkDiff (requires a graphical session)
vimdiff
Use Vim
vscode
Use Visual Studio Code (requires a graphical session)
winmerge
Use WinMerge (requires a graphical session)
xxdiff
Use xxdiff (requires a graphical session)
difftool.<tool>.cmd
Specify the command to invoke the specified diff tool. The
specified command is evaluated in shell with the following
variables available: LOCAL is set to the name of the temporary
file containing the contents of the diff pre-image and REMOTE
is set to the name of the temporary file containing the
contents of the diff post-image.
See the --tool=<tool> option in git-difftool(1) for more
details.
difftool.<tool>.path
Override the path for the given tool. This is useful in case
your tool is not in the PATH.
difftool.trustExitCode
Exit difftool if the invoked diff tool returns a non-zero exit
status.
See the --trust-exit-code option in git-difftool(1) for more
details.
difftool.prompt
Prompt before each invocation of the diff tool.
difftool.guiDefault
Set true to use the diff.guitool by default (equivalent to
specifying the --gui argument), or auto to select diff.guitool
or diff.tool depending on the presence of a DISPLAY
environment variable value. The default is false, where the
--gui argument must be provided explicitly for the
diff.guitool to be used.
git-diff(1)
Show changes between commits, commit and working tree, etc
git-mergetool(1)
Run merge conflict resolution tools to resolve merge conflicts
git-config(1)
Get and set repository or global options
Part of the git(1) suite
This page is part of the git (Git distributed version control
system) project. Information about the project can be found at
⟨http://git-scm.com/⟩. If you have a bug report for this manual
page, see ⟨http://git-scm.com/community⟩. This page was obtained
from the project's upstream Git repository
⟨https://github.com/git/git.git⟩ on 2025-08-11. (At that time,
the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
repository was 2025-08-07.) If you discover any rendering
problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there is
a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
(which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
man-pages@man7.org
Git 2.51.0.rc1 2025-08-07 GIT-DIFFTOOL(1)
Pages that refer to this page: git(1), git-config(1), git-diff(1), git-difftool(1)
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HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
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