Question

How to load a different colorscheme when doing vimdiff.

I want this because the my current colorscheme does not show some diffs properly in vimdiff, For. eg some diff is shown with same fg/bg color. This makes it very hard to understand the diff. So every time i do a vimdiff i have to do :colorscheme some_other_scheme

Can this be done in .vimrc file?

Answer 1

If you’re calling vimdiff from the command-line, put the following in your .vimrc:

if &diff
    colorscheme some_other_scheme
endif

(if you’re already in vimdiff => :colorscheme some_other_scheme thanks dlaehnemann)

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If you’re using vimdiff from within vim, you’d either have to override the commands you use to start/stop it (e.g. diffthis, diffoff) using :cnoreabbr (there’s also a plugin) or use an autocommand:

au FilterWritePre * if &diff | colorscheme xyz | endif

FilterWritePre is called before filtering through an external program (the diff utility) and the &diff-option is set by vim when it’s going into diff-mode (among others, see :help diff)

I’m not sure which autocommand to use to return to the original colorscheme though.