Question

Is there any way to make the output format of git diffs like cvs style diffs? I find git diffs to be less readable. Also, the git diffs appearing in more are annoying – how can I disable this?

Answer 1

Try playing with standard diff formatting:

git difftool -y -x "diff --unchanged-group-format='' --old-line-format='< %L' --new-line-format='> %L'"

This gives CVS-like newlines and oldlines, with no context, but it doesn’t insert the extras between groups of different lines. Not quite sure how to achieve the rest, given I don’t know the extent to which you would like CVS-like formatting.

man diff

For more information

Also see

git difftool -y -x "diff -n"

But I doubt this does what you want. If this does work for you, to make it work every time with git diff, see Configuring diff tool with .gitconfig?, which references http://jeetworks.com/node/90 in the accepted answer.