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37 lines
1.1 KiB
Markdown
37 lines
1.1 KiB
Markdown
# Diffing With Patience
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The default diff algorithm used by Git is pretty good, but it can get
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mislead by larger, complex changesets. The result is a noisier, misaligned
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diff output.
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If you'd like a diff that is generally a bit cleaner and can afford a little
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slow down (you probably can), you can instead use the `patience` algorithm
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which is described as such:
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> Patience Diff, instead, focuses its energy on the low-frequency
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> high-content lines which serve as markers or signatures of important
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> content in the text. It is still an LCS-based diff at its core, but with
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> an important difference, as it only considers the longest common
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> subsequence of the signature lines:
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> Find all lines which occur exactly once on both sides, then do longest
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> common subsequence on those lines, matching them up.
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You can set this as the default algorithm by adding the following lines to
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your `~/.gitconfig` file:
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```
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[diff]
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algorithm = patience
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```
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or it can be set from the command line with:
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```bash
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$ git config --global diff.algorithm patience
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```
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[source](http://bryanpendleton.blogspot.com/2010/05/patience-diff.html)
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h/t Josh Davey
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