Question

I’m using command-line git and Kaleidoscope to perform my code reviews. When I merge a branch into another and type

git difftool

Kaleidoscope only displays changes that are ‘not staged for commit’ and don’t display ‘unmerged paths’ or ‘changed to be committed’.

The command-line displays the rest of the stuff.

Any idea why?

This is the relevant content of my .gitconfig

[difftool "Kaleidoscope"]
        cmd = ksdiff-wrapper git \"$LOCAL\" \"$REMOTE\"
[diff]
        tool = Kaleidoscope
[difftool]
        prompt = false

Answer 1

Short answer: what you want to be typing on the command line is git difftool HEAD, not git difftool.

Long answer: This is normal git behavior, and it’s kind of frustrating if you don’t realize what’s happening. I’m not sure why the command-line diff is working as you expect, but both git diff and git difftool should be performing similarly as per the git man page:

git diff [–options] [–] [<path>…]
This form is to view the changes you made relative to the index (staging area for the next commit). In other words,
the differences are what you could tell git to further add to the index but you still haven’t. You can stage these
changes by using git-add(1).

So git diff and git difftool should show you only unstaged changes.

If you want to see staged changes, you should use git diff --cached and git difftool --cached instead:

git diff [–options] –cached [<commit>] [–] [<path>…]
This form is to view the changes you staged for the next commit relative to the named <commit>. Typically you would
want comparison with the latest commit, so if you do not give <commit>, it defaults to HEAD. If HEAD does not exist
(e.g. unborned branches) and <commit> is not given, it shows all staged changes. –staged is a synonym of –cached.

Finally, if you want to see both staged and unstaged changes, you use the third form, git diff HEAD or git difftool HEAD:

git diff [–options] <commit> [–] [<path>…] This form is to view
the changes you have in your working tree relative to the named
<commit>. You can use HEAD to compare it with the latest commit, or a
branch name to compare with the tip of a different branch.