Ask HN: Alternative to svn diff?

2 points by symbiotic 16y ago ↗ HN

Often I need to work on a remote machine via ssh for work. I have no problem using svn on the command line other than when I need to diff two revisions of a file.

I find the output hard to read and sometimes it just tells me that the entire old file was removed, and the entire new file was added, really giving me no information about what was actually changed.

It would be great if there was some command line tool that would give me a little bit nicer output (something that's easier to read than the traditional pluses and minuses).

Has anyone else encountered this problem and/or found a good solution?

5 comments

[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 16.9 ms ] thread

IgorPartola 16y ago ↗

Take a look at

  svn help diff

Specifically, you can pass arguments down to diff itself.

apgwoz 16y ago ↗

How about some visual diff tools? It depends on the platform, but there are some really nice ones out there. If you're using Linux, try out meld. This guy has a nice little script for diffing SVN stuff: http://www.toolsforteams.com/roller/blog/entry/svn_diff_with...

For Windows, I hear Beyond Compare is great, though I don't know if it has SVN integration...

For Mac, maybe http://www.versionsapp.com/ does what you need?

nuclear_eclipse 16y ago ↗

I personally like to use vimdiff when viewing changes. A quick google shows some easy to follow instructions for setting it up:

http://blog.tplus1.com/index.php/2007/08/29/how-to-use-vimdi...

symbiotic 16y ago ↗

This looks promising. Unfortunately I can't use any GUI tools because the server doesn't have a GUI installed.

nuclear_eclipse 16y ago ↗

Um, vimdiff is a command line tool... I run it in my terminals all the time...