Is there a way to "git -c diff.external=delta"?

[byron-hawkins]

After reading through the overview of delta, I got the impression that this would work:

git -c diff.external=delta diff --ext-diff --merge-base feature/improvement --  src/ui/widget.cpp

However, it seems delta is not intended to accept the arguments of an external diff tool:

• arg: #src/ui/widget.cpp#
• arg: #/tmp/git-blob-K3RQb9/widget.cpp#
• arg: #32ee94e85045061e6f3a4e5123163dbb9d8fcdbb#
• arg: #100644#
• arg: #src/ui/widget.cpp#
• arg: #0000000000000000000000000000000000000000#
• arg: #100644#

Is there an easy way to make delta work directly with the git diff command?

[dandavison]

Hi @byron-hawkins, delta displays diffs; it doesn't compute diffs itself. To use delta, you feed it the output of git diff. The normal way to do that is to add delta configuration to gitconfig: https://dandavison.github.io/delta/get-started.html and then you simply use your normal git command:

git diff --merge-base feature/improvement --  src/ui/widget.cpp

alternatively, or to quickly try out delta without messing with git config, you can just pipe git's output to delta:

git diff --merge-base feature/improvement --  src/ui/widget.cpp | delta

delta can display diff output from any program that produces unified diff (diff -u) or git diff format. But it's most commonly used with git.