Git diff output to file preserve coloring

Question

Is it possible to do git diff and save the output to a file with the coloring somehow?

I know how to do git diff > filename.rtf - which saves to a file, but I'd like to preserve the coloring.

You can convert to html with color: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2013091/coloured-diff-to-html — Gabe Moothart, Mar 14 '12 at 17:31
Notepad++ will highlight the file if you save it with the .diff extension. — Monsignor, Nov 05 '14 at 12:33

score 222 · Answer 1 · edited Aug 05 '19 at 22:21

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Try:

git diff --color > foo.txt

Then later issue:

cat foo.txt

Or:

less -R foo.txt

edited Aug 05 '19 at 22:21

Peter Mortensen

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answered Mar 14 '12 at 17:09

rtn

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@RoR, one person's "gibberish" is another person's (well, terminal's) color codes. ;-) I tried it and it works; the coloring is preserved if I `cat` the file from the command-line. (How else would you expect the colors to be preserved?) – mpontillo Mar 14 '12 at 17:20
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Well that's what it does. Adds bash coloring codes. If you cat the file in the console it shows the colors. – rtn Mar 14 '12 at 17:20
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@RoR You'd have to put something in the middle there to convert the bash color codes to rtf format. – rtn Mar 14 '12 at 17:23
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Notepad++ can highlight diff files. (*.diff extensions are automatically highlighted, otherwise change `Language --> D --> Diff`.) If you don't like default colors, change them in `Settings --> Style Configurator --> Diff`. To copy paste with colors you can use a plugin (e.g. `NppExport`) that allows exporting/copying into RTF or HTML. – Nikita R. Oct 22 '15 at 22:31
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git diff A B > foo.diff (Many editors will open the file with the colors because the file is a .diff file) – zeusstl Mar 18 '16 at 13:12
Is there a way to export the git diff to wiki markup (with colors) – Tarun Sapra Dec 19 '17 at 13:53

ironhyde · Answer 2 · 2018-01-29T23:20:07.280

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Save the file with a .diff extension and open it in Notepad++ or Vim or SublimeText.

git diff > 20150203_someChanges.diff

Thanks @Monsingor

edited Jan 29 '18 at 23:20

answered Feb 03 '15 at 19:46

ironhyde

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Thanks. I didn't know NPP had this syntax! – Danny Nov 20 '20 at 22:46
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the best answer I found so far it works also with VS Code – Ali Apr 15 '21 at 19:20

score 23 · Answer 3 · edited Aug 05 '19 at 22:27

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Open the output diff file in Sublime Text 2. It shows the diff colors.

edited Aug 05 '19 at 22:27

Peter Mortensen

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answered Aug 06 '13 at 21:52

Julien

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You might need to change syntax to diff to enable proper highlighting in case the diff file has extension different from *.diff. (via View -> Syntax -> Diff). – Nikita R. Oct 22 '15 at 22:27
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It doesn't highlight `diff.txt` for me, even with automatically detected "Diff" in the right bottom corner. – Nakilon Sep 20 '16 at 20:31

score 20 · Answer 4 · edited Sep 20 '16 at 20:30

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To expand on @Gabe's answer.

You can pipe the output to an ansi to html converter bash script and direct that output to an html file:

git diff --color|./ansi2html.sh > changes.html

of course html can be viewed by any browser so output can be read in Windows etc.

ansi2html code is here: http://www.pixelbeat.org/scripts/ansi2html.sh

edited Sep 20 '16 at 20:30

Nakilon

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answered May 05 '14 at 20:37

sk8asd123

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doesn't work I get: gawk: cmd. line:25: (FILENAME=- FNR=1) fatal: attempt to use array `a (from span)' in a scalar context – Tim May 19 '15 at 01:59
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Get Homebrew and run `brew install gawk`. You'll also need `brew install gnu-sed`. – Geoffrey Booth Oct 30 '15 at 19:53
exactly what i want, awesome ! – Keith Jul 02 '19 at 05:15
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The ansi2html python library did it for me https://github.com/ralphbean/ansi2html. pip installable and works exactly as the bash script in this answer. Don't forget to replace "./ansi2html.sh" with "ansi2html". – Nagasaki45 Feb 04 '20 at 00:13
In Debian-like, install [kbtin](https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=kbtin) and type `git diff --word-diff --color commit1 commit2 | ansi2html > changes.html`. – Olivier Cailloux Oct 26 '22 at 11:00

score 8 · Answer 5 · answered Mar 24 '13 at 21:24

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Vim colors files containing git diff's beautifully.

git diff

answered Mar 24 '13 at 21:24

Rose Perrone

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score 5 · Answer 6 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:54

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I found an answer here: Color output of specific git command.

You can pass -c color.ui=always to any git command and it will keep coloring on redirection. For example: git -c color.ui=always status > file

edited May 23 '17 at 11:54

Community

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answered Aug 24 '16 at 07:19

amaslenn

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score 2 · Answer 7 · answered Jan 13 '18 at 16:46

to allow any colorized terminal text ... git diff or any other ... to be viewable from a browser

sudo apt-get install aha  #  https://github.com/theZiz/aha

install aha using above then issue

git diff --color mysourcefile  | aha > ~/cool_colorized.html

firefox  ~/cool_colorized.html

score 2 · Answer 8 · answered Jul 12 '22 at 07:53

As an alternative to file redirection, you also have the git diff --output option

git diff --color --output=aFile
cat aFile
# you would still see the colors

However, make sure to not use the combined diff format (for diff on merge commits), like git diff -c or git diff --cc

With Git 2.38 (Q3 2022), certain diff options (including --output) are currently ignored when combined-diff is shown; mark them as incompatible with the feature.

See commit cfb19ae, commit e3d1be4 (18 Jun 2022) by René Scharfe (rscharfe).
^{(Merged by Junio C Hamano -- gitster -- in commit a2d1f00, 11 Jul 2022)}

combine-diff: abort if --output is given

^{Reported-by: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason}
^{Signed-off-by: René Scharfe}

The code for combined diffs currently only writes to stdout.
Abort and report that fact instead of silently ignoring the --output option.
The (empty) output file has already been created at that point, though.

The error message would therefore be:

combined diff and '--output' cannot be used together

score 1 · Answer 9 · answered Aug 15 '16 at 11:04

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git remote add -f b path/to/repo_b.git
git remote update
git diff master remotes/b/master > foo.txt

Differences extracted in '*.txt' files are easily read by SublimeText2 without the need to set (via View -> Syntax -> Diff).

answered Aug 15 '16 at 11:04

Abhijeet

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`git remote rm remotes/b/master` to reset branch back to it's original state. – Abhijeet Aug 17 '16 at 07:36

score 0 · Answer 10 · answered Aug 28 '17 at 16:41

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You could upload to GitHub and provide a link to the relevant commit.

answered Aug 28 '17 at 16:41

Choylton B. Higginbottom

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Git diff output to file preserve coloring

10 Answers10

`combine-diff`: abort if --output is given

Linked

Git diff output to file preserve coloring

10 Answers10

combine-diff: abort if --output is given

Linked

`combine-diff`: abort if --output is given