{"id":15018710,"url":"https://github.com/wilfred/difftastic","last_synced_at":"2025-09-09T20:36:04.039Z","repository":{"id":37387507,"uuid":"162276894","full_name":"Wilfred/difftastic","owner":"Wilfred","description":"a structural diff that understands syntax 🟥🟩","archived":false,"fork":false,"pushed_at":"2025-08-29T22:03:37.000Z","size":1700704,"stargazers_count":22883,"open_issues_count":242,"forks_count":395,"subscribers_count":62,"default_branch":"master","last_synced_at":"2025-09-06T00:51:50.593Z","etag":null,"topics":["diff","tree-sitter"],"latest_commit_sha":null,"homepage":"https://difftastic.wilfred.me.uk/","language":"Rust","has_issues":true,"has_wiki":null,"has_pages":null,"mirror_url":null,"source_name":null,"license":"mit","status":null,"scm":"git","pull_requests_enabled":true,"icon_url":"https://github.com/Wilfred.png","metadata":{"files":{"readme":"README.md","changelog":"CHANGELOG.md","contributing":null,"funding":null,"license":"LICENSE","code_of_conduct":null,"threat_model":null,"audit":null,"citation":"CITATION.cff","codeowners":null,"security":null,"support":null,"governance":null,"roadmap":null,"authors":null,"dei":null,"publiccode":null,"codemeta":null,"zenodo":null,"notice":null,"maintainers":null,"copyright":null,"agents":null,"dco":null,"cla":null}},"created_at":"2018-12-18T11:19:45.000Z","updated_at":"2025-09-05T22:34:29.000Z","dependencies_parsed_at":"2022-07-10T14:01:05.856Z","dependency_job_id":"db40450e-2d4d-4ddc-818b-f5b4d4580d03","html_url":"https://github.com/Wilfred/difftastic","commit_stats":{"total_commits":11158,"total_committers":348,"mean_commits":32.0632183908046,"dds":0.8052518372468185,"last_synced_commit":"1e9f4376887a01817bcedfc56a03d3eb4ab14a9d"},"previous_names":[],"tags_count":75,"template":false,"template_full_name":null,"purl":"pkg:github/Wilfred/difftastic","repository_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub/repositories/Wilfred%2Fdifftastic","tags_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub/repositories/Wilfred%2Fdifftastic/tags","releases_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub/repositories/Wilfred%2Fdifftastic/releases","manifests_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub/repositories/Wilfred%2Fdifftastic/manifests","owner_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub/owners/Wilfred","download_url":"https://codeload.github.com/Wilfred/difftastic/tar.gz/refs/heads/master","sbom_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub/repositories/Wilfred%2Fdifftastic/sbom","scorecard":null,"host":{"name":"GitHub","url":"https://github.com","kind":"github","repositories_count":274358265,"owners_count":25270678,"icon_url":"https://github.com/github.png","version":null,"created_at":"2022-05-30T11:31:42.601Z","updated_at":"2022-07-04T15:15:14.044Z","status":"online","status_checked_at":"2025-09-09T02:00:10.223Z","response_time":80,"last_error":null,"robots_txt_status":"success","robots_txt_updated_at":"2025-07-24T06:49:26.215Z","robots_txt_url":"https://github.com/robots.txt","online":true,"can_crawl_api":true,"host_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub","repositories_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub/repositories","repository_names_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub/repository_names","owners_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub/owners"}},"keywords":["diff","tree-sitter"],"created_at":"2024-09-24T19:52:20.524Z","updated_at":"2025-09-09T20:36:04.030Z","avatar_url":"https://github.com/Wilfred.png","language":"Rust","readme":"\u003cp align=\"center\"\u003e\n  \u003ca href=\"#readme\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"img/logo.png\" alt=\"it's difftastic!\"/\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003ca href=\"https://difftastic.wilfred.me.uk/introduction.html\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https://img.shields.io/badge/manual-en-brightgreen?style=flat-square\" alt=\"English manual\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\n  \u003ca href=\"https://difftastic.wilfred.me.uk/zh-CN/\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https://img.shields.io/badge/manual-zh--CN-brightgreen?style=flat-square\" alt=\"Chinese manual\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\n  \u003ca href=\"https://crates.io/crates/difftastic\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https://img.shields.io/crates/v/difftastic.svg?style=flat-square\" alt=\"crates.io\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\n  \u003ca href=\"https://codecov.io/gh/Wilfred/difftastic\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https://img.shields.io/codecov/c/github/Wilfred/difftastic?style=flat-square\u0026token=dZzAZtQT2S\" alt=\"codecov.io\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003e\n\u003c/p\u003e\n\nDifftastic is a structural diff tool that compares files based on\ntheir syntax.\n\n**For installation instructions, see\n[Installation](https://difftastic.wilfred.me.uk/installation.html) in\n[the manual](http://difftastic.wilfred.me.uk/).**\n\n## Basic Example\n\n![Screenshot of difftastic and JS](img/js.png)\n\nIn this JavaScript example, we can see:\n\n(1) Difftastic understands nesting. It highlights the matching `{` and\n`}`, but understands that `foo()` hasn't changed despite the leading\nwhitespace.\n\n(2) Difftastic understands which lines should be aligned. It's aligned\n`bar(1)` on the left with `bar(2)` on the right, even though the\ntextual content isn't identical.\n\n(3) Difftastic understands that line-wrapping isn't\nmeaningful. `\"eric\"` is now on a new line, but it hasn't changed.\n\n## One Minute Demo\n\n[![asciicast](https://asciinema.org/a/480875.svg)](https://asciinema.org/a/480875)\n\nThis one minute screencast demonstrates difftastic usage with both\nstandalone files and git.\n\n## Languages\n\nDifftastic supports over 30 programming languages, see [the\nmanual](https://difftastic.wilfred.me.uk/languages_supported.html) for the full list.\n\nIf a file has an unrecognised extension, difftastic uses a\ntextual diff with word highlighting.\n\n## Known Issues\n\nPerformance. Difftastic scales relatively poorly on files with a large\nnumber of changes, and can use a lot of memory.\n\nDisplay. Difftastic has a side-by-side display which usually works well, but can\nbe confusing.\n\nRobustness. Difftastic regularly has releases that fix crashes.\n\n## Non-goals\n\nPatching. Difftastic output is intended for human consumption, and it\ndoes not generate patches that you can apply later. Use `diff` if you\nneed a patch.\n\n(Patch files are also line-oriented, which is too limited for\ndifftastic. Difftastic might find additions and removals on the same\nline, and it tracks the relationship between line numbers in the old\nand new file.)\n\nMerging. AST merging is a hard problem that difftastic does not\naddress. You might be interested in the [mergiraf\ntool](https://mergiraf.org/) (\"merge giraffe\"), which does do AST\nmerging.\n\n## FAQ\n\n### Isn't this basically `--word-diff --ignore-all-space`?\n\nWord diffing [can't do\nthis](https://twitter.com/_wilfredh/status/1510139929971421191/photo/1).\n\nDifftastic parses your code. It understands when whitespace matters,\nsuch as inside string literals or languages like Python. It understands\nthat `x-1` is three tokens in JS but one token in Lisp.\n\n### Can I use difftastic with git?\n\nYou can! The difftastic manual [includes instructions for git\nusage](https://difftastic.wilfred.me.uk/git.html). You can also use it\n[with mercurial](https://difftastic.wilfred.me.uk/mercurial.html).\n\nIf you're an Emacs user, check out [this blog\npost](https://tsdh.org/posts/2022-08-01-difftastic-diffing-with-magit.html)\nshowing one way to use difftastic with magit, as well as\n[difftastic.el](https://github.com/pkryger/difftastic.el).\n\n### Does difftastic integrate with my favourite tool?\n\nProbably not. Difftastic is young. Consider writing a plugin for your\nfavourite tool, and I will link it in the README!\n\n### What about parse errors?\n\nBy default, difftastic falls back to a line-oriented diff whenever\nparse errors are encountered.\n\nThis is a conservative choice to ensure that difftastic never claims\ntwo syntactically different files are the same.\n\nParse errors can occur if the file uses language features that the\nparser does not understand, if the language relies on a preprocessor\nbefore parsing (e.g. C++), or if the file has genuine syntactic\nmistakes.\n\nIn practice, difftastic virtually always produces a good result when\nthere are a few minor parse errors. Consider allowing a small number\nof parse errors when using difftastic.\n\n```\n$ export DFT_PARSE_ERROR_LIMIT=20\n$ difft foo1.c foo2.c\n```\n\n### Can difftastic help me with merge conflicts?\n\nYes! As of version 0.50, difftastic understands merge conflict markers\n(i.e. `\u003c\u003c\u003c\u003c\u003c\u003c\u003c`, `=======` and `\u003e\u003e\u003e\u003e\u003e\u003e\u003e`).\n\nPass your file with conflicts as a single argument to\ndifftastic. Difftastic will construct the two conflicting files and\ndiff those.\n\n```\n$ difft file_with_conflicts.js\n```\n\n### Can difftastic do merges?\n\nNo. AST merging is a hard problem that difftastic does not address.\n\nAST diffing is a lossy process from the perspective of a text\ndiff. Difftastic will ignore whitespace that isn't syntactically\nsignificant, but merging requires tracking whitespace.\n\nThe [mergiraf](https://mergiraf.org/) tool does offer merges based on\na tree-sitter AST however.\n\n### Can difftastic ignore reordering?\n\nNo. Difftastic always considers order to be important, so diffing\ne.g. `set(1, 2)` and `set(2, 1)` will show changes.\n\nIf you're diffing JSON, consider sorting the keys before passing them\nto difftastic.\n\n```\n$ difft \u003c(jq --sort-keys \u003c file_1.json) \u003c(jq --sort-keys \u003c file_2.json)\n```\n\nSee also [Tricky Cases: Unordered Data\nTypes](https://difftastic.wilfred.me.uk/tricky_cases.html#unordered-data-types)\nin the manual.\n\n### Can I use difftastic to check for syntactic changes without diffing?\n\nYes. Difftastic can check if the two files have the same AST, without\ncalculating a diff. This is much faster than normal diffing, and\nuseful for building tools that check for changes.\n\nFor example:\n\n```\n$ difft --check-only --exit-code before.js after.js\n```\n\nThis will set the exit code to 0 if there are no syntactic changes, or\n1 if there are changes found.\n\n### Why aren't colours appearing in my terminal?\n\nDifftastic uses ANSI bright colours by default, but some terminal\nthemes show bright colours as grey. Solarized is a popular theme that\ndoes this.\n\nIf you're a Solarized user, use `export DFT_BACKGROUND=light` to\ndisable bright colours, or try a different terminal colour scheme.\n\n### How does it work?\n\nDifftastic treats structural diffing as a graph problem, and uses\nDijkstra's algorithm.\n\nMy [blog\npost](https://www.wilfred.me.uk/blog/2022/09/06/difftastic-the-fantastic-diff/)\ndescribes the design, and there is also an [internals section in the\nmanual](https://difftastic.wilfred.me.uk/diffing.html).\n\n## Translation\n\n+ [Chinese](./translation/zh-CN/README-zh-CN.md)\n\n## License\n\nDifftastic is open source under the MIT license, see LICENSE for more\ndetails.\n\nThis repository also includes tree-sitter parsers by other authors in\nthe `vendored_parsers/` directory. These are a mix of the MIT license and the\nApache license. See `vendored_parsers/*/LICENSE` for more details.\n\nFiles in `sample_files/` are also under the MIT license unless stated\notherwise in their header.\n","funding_links":[],"categories":[],"sub_categories":[],"project_url":"https://awesome.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/projects/github.com%2Fwilfred%2Fdifftastic","html_url":"https://awesome.ecosyste.ms/projects/github.com%2Fwilfred%2Fdifftastic","lists_url":"https://awesome.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/projects/github.com%2Fwilfred%2Fdifftastic/lists"}