Git diffs on steroids

As a developer and handyman, I often use Git to correctly version my projects, and I often need to see my git diffs. That’s why today we’re going to talk about Delta, a syntax highlighting pager for git, diff, grep and blame output.

Demonstration

Here’s a before-and-after demonstration of the result you’ll get at the end of this article.

Before:

After

Installation

Delta require a recent version of less for paging

You can use cargo if you use Rust

cargo install git-delta

MacOS

brew install delta less

Linux

It depends on your distro, but in most cases you can use your default package manager or the .deb file.

Example (Arch Linux)

pacman -s pacman -S git-delta less

TIP: You can visit this page to find the installation method for your distro.

Windows

Under Windows, you can use scoop, winget or chocolatey.

scoop install delta less

Configuration

Edit your .gitconfig (Locate in your home folder ~/.gitconfig) to add these lines:

[core]
    pager = delta

[interactive]
    diffFilter = delta --color-only

[delta]
  true-color = always
  navigate = true # use n and N to move between diff sections
  light = false # set to true if you're in a terminal with a light background color (e.g. the default macOS terminal)
  hyperlinks = true
  side-by-side = true
  line-numbers = true # set to true if you want line numbers

[merge]
    conflictstyle = diff3

[diff]
    colorMoved = default

Bonus

Custom syntax theme

You can create your own syntax highlighting theme for Delta.

Create a <custom_name>.gitconfig file with these lines:

[delta]
  syntax-theme                  = <you_custom_name>
  minus-style                   = syntax "<hex_color>"
  minus-non-emph-style          = syntax "<hex_color>"
  minus-emph-style              = "<hex_color>" "<hex_color>"
  minus-empty-line-marker-style = syntax "<hex_color>"
  line-numbers-minus-style      = "<hex_color>"
  plus-style                    = syntax "<hex_color>"
  plus-non-emph-style           = syntax "<hex_color>"
  plus-emph-style               = "<hex_color>" "<hex_color>"
  plus-empty-line-marker-style  = syntax "<hex_color>"
  line-numbers-plus-style       = "<hex_color>"
  line-numbers-zero-style       = "<hex_color>"

All fields between the upper and lower symbols must be replaced (example: <hex_color> to #000000).

And add these lines to your .gitconfig:

[include]
  path = path/to/your/<custom_theme>.gitconfig

My customized syntax theme

If you like, you can use my custom syntax theme Delta, which you can find here.

Simply clone this repository into your personal folder (~):

git clone https://github.com/Koalhack/darcubox-nvim.git

And add these lines to your .gitconfig:

[include]
  path = ~/darcubox-nvim/extras/delta/darcubox.gitconfig

INFO: This theme can also be used with many other programs and tools (nvim, sublimeText, bat, Windows Terminal, etc.).

Usage

Run your git command normally:

git diff