Wilfred/difftastic on Hacker News

…- https://github.com/lambdaisland/deep-diff2 - https://fazzone.github.io/autochrome.html - https://github.com/Wilfred/difftastic

comment by KingMob · 2026-06-18 · in Lore – Open source version control system designed for scalability

…because it has at least one severe bug involving python that has been present for a long time: https://github.com/Wilfred/difftastic/issues/587

comment by kennykartman · 2026-04-07 · in Improved Git Diffs with Delta, Fzf and a Little Shell Scripting

Structural diff tools like difftastic[1] is a good middle ground and still underexplored IMO. [1] https://github.com/Wilfred/difftastic

comment by fuhsnn · 2026-02-15 · in SCM as a database for the code

…the `void` and `int` changes with a heavier background of red and green respectively [difftastic]: https://github.com/Wilfred/difftastic

comment by vinnyhaps · 2025-11-13 · in Mergiraf: Syntax-Aware Merging for Git

…(IMEX) than nvim with matching plugin for feature-parity. EDIT: I would also add difftastic ( https://github.com/Wilfred/difftastic ) which is a syntax aware diff tool. I don't use it much, but it does makes some diff so so much easier to…

comment by maeln · 2025-10-13 · in Modern Linux tools

…tree sitter grammar exists, difftastic is the best choice by far. It's better than you think it is. https://github.com/Wilfred/difftastic No really, if you haven't tried it, it's better than you think it is.…

comment by shae · 2025-10-01 · in Diff Algorithms

and https://github.com/Wilfred/difftastic

comment by leeoniya · 2025-10-01 · in Diff Algorithms

…from exactly the same software supply chain problem that we need to avoid in the first place: https://github.com/Wilfred/difftastic/blob/master/Cargo.lock Edit: also, consider how much of https://github.com/Wilfred/difftastic/commits/master…

comment by rlpb · 2025-09-16 · in Shai-Hulud malware attack: Tinycolor and over 40 NPM packages compromised

…of linter that shows the logical diff, not an assortment of characters or lines that changed. [1]: https://github.com/Wilfred/difftastic

comment by peanball · 2025-09-08 · in Formatting code should be unnecessary

▲ 7

Difftastic: A structural diff that understands syntax

story by thunderbong · 2025-07-12 · 0 comments

▲ 3

Difftastic: A structural diff that understands syntax

story by gurjeet · 2025-07-11 · 0 comments

https://github.com/Wilfred/difftastic/wiki/Structural-Diffs is a nice list of alternatives. Difftastic itself is great as well! The author wrote up nice posts about its design: https://www.wilfred.me.uk/blog/2022/09/06/difftastic-the-fan...…

comment by ilyagr · 2025-07-10 · in Diffsitter – A Tree-sitter based AST difftool to get meaningful semantic diffs

I thought I’ve seen it before. I use Difftastic myself, amazing diffs. https://github.com/Wilfred/difftastic

comment by koozz · 2025-07-10 · in Diffsitter – A Tree-sitter based AST difftool to get meaningful semantic diffs

I prefer difftastic ( https://github.com/Wilfred/difftastic ) as diff tool. I think it's the most readable and understandable diff.

comment by marcyb5st · 2025-02-25 · in How Core Git Developers Configure Git

…yet integrated into the standard tools. For example, if you want a command line tool, you can use https://github.com/Wilfred/difftastic or if you are interested in a VS Code extension / GitHub App instead, you can give…

comment by DarkPlayer · 2025-02-05 · in Software development topics I've changed my mind on

▲ 3

Difftastic: A structural diff that understands syntax

story by thunderbong · 2025-01-23 · 0 comments

This is possible already with tools like difftastic. https://github.com/Wilfred/difftastic

comment by knubie · 2025-01-03 · in Types are a basic tool of software design (2018)

…is "a structural diff that understands syntax" using treesitter. https://difftastic.wilfred.me.uk/ https://github.com/Wilfred/difftastic

comment by sicariusnoctis · 2024-11-09 · in Delta: A syntax-highlighting pager for Git, diff, grep, and blame output

How is this better than Difftastic? https://github.com/Wilfred/difftastic

comment by DrBenCarson · 2024-11-09 · in Mergiraf: a syntax-aware merge driver for Git

…with git and it works like a charm. [1] [2] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27768861 [2] https://github.com/Wilfred/difftastic

comment by h4ck_th3_pl4n3t · 2024-08-27 · in Developer tool 'diff' is 40 years old: can it be improved?

…in the middle of the line are highlighted and whitespace is ignored. - Somebody already recommended https://github.com/Wilfred/difftastic , which I second. It uses treesitter and is very interesting. Surprisingly, in practice difftastic is…

comment by ilyagr · 2024-08-27 · in Developer tool 'diff' is 40 years old: can it be improved?

After switching to difftastic for semantic diff, I have never looked back. ( https://github.com/Wilfred/difftastic ) How does semanticdiff compare to that? Anyone got experience?

comment by whirlwin · 2024-07-22 · in How far should a programming language aware diff go?

…tokens have changed, and which haven't, regardless of how they are laid out. These already exist: https://github.com/Wilfred/difftastic when we get that, then we should get even less merge conflicts. Counterintuitively, that is not the…

comment by karma_pharmer · 2024-04-19 · in Linus Torvalds adds arbitrary tabs to kernel code

…is an `—-override` option you can use to specify the language in which a file should be parsed. https://github.com/Wilfred/difftastic/blob/master/CHANGELOG....

comment by planetpluta · 2024-03-22 · in Difftastic, a structural diff tool that understands syntax

…closest for now, although I don't think it uses tree-sitter. https://semanticdiff.com/ Found via https://github.com/Wilfred/difftastic/issues/194 .

comment by modernerd · 2024-03-22 · in Difftastic, a structural diff tool that understands syntax

…feature you're looking for is sufficiently different from the one discussed in that thread. [1]: https://github.com/Wilfred/difftastic/issues/611

comment by jez · 2024-03-21 · in Difftastic, a structural diff tool that understands syntax

…Nova could have a DIY wizard if they wanted it to. The source for Difftastic discussed here (at https://github.com/Wilfred/difftastic/blob/master/src/parse/... ) is also very simple: for each of a list of supported languages, import the…

comment by kstrauser · 2024-03-21 · in Difftastic, a structural diff tool that understands syntax

https://github.com/Wilfred/difftastic/issues/560 help wanted :)

comment by pas · 2024-03-21 · in Difftastic, a structural diff tool that understands syntax

…[1], but tree-sitter produces a 60MB .c file that’s too big to add to the repository. [1]: https://github.com/Wilfred/difftastic/pull/633

comment by gcr · 2024-03-20 · in Let's create a Tree-sitter grammar

…tool it's using? Wonder if using another one, e.g. difftastic[1] would be a better experience. [1]: https://github.com/Wilfred/difftastic

comment by ivanjermakov · 2023-12-28 · in Suggestions: A simple human-readable format for suggesting changes to text files

Maybe look here (never used it though) https://github.com/Wilfred/difftastic

comment by LelouBil · 2023-12-10 · in AST-grep(sg) is a CLI tool for code structural search, lint, and rewriting

…https://semanticdiff.com/ . I'm a co-founder of this project. If you prefer a CLI tool, check out https://github.com/Wilfred/difftastic . It supports more languages, but doesn't recognize when code has been replaced by an equivalent…

comment by slackner · 2023-11-28 · in $20k bounty was claimed

…good job at language diff'ing without the annoyance of formatting as I hypothesised earlier. [1]: https://github.com/Wilfred/difftastic

comment by guiraldelli · 2023-10-24 · in Unified versus Split Diff

…uses "structural" diffing (as opposed to line diffing) for more granular diff highlighting. [0] https://github.com/Wilfred/difftastic

comment by knubie · 2023-10-24 · in Unified versus Split Diff

…of view, and trying to build a comprehensible UI once you've done the structural AST diff. [1]: https://github.com/wilfred/difftastic

comment by Wilfred · 2023-08-12 · in Pijul: Version-Control Post-Git [video]

There is a diff tool called difftastic: https://github.com/Wilfred/difftastic The idea is that it does not show diff based on text change, but on syntastic meaning. For that, it uses tree-sitter. I think it still shows the trailing comma…

comment by selectnull · 2023-07-30 · in Always leave a trailing comma in Python lists, dicts, tuples

▲ 9

Wilfred/difftastic: a structural diff that understands syntax

story by anotherpaulg · 2023-06-23 · 1 comment

…tech always seemed cool, but never felt I had access to it on my finger tips. one such tool is https://github.com/Wilfred/difftastic (semantic diff) will definitely be trying this out.

comment by O_H_E · 2023-05-11 · in Show HN: AST-grep, a grep/eslint/codemod hybrid tool, powered by tree-sitter.

…skepticism is justified, but there are two tools that I have seen that use tree-sitter for diffing: https://github.com/wilfred/difftastic https://github.com/afnanenayet/diffsitter (I have not tried either personally.)

comment by b3morales · 2022-11-24 · in Emacs: Feature/tree-sitter merged into master

…like to use a mix of https://github.com/extrawurst/gitui (doesn't support signed commits yet!) and https://github.com/Wilfred/difftastic which provides amazing semantic diffs.

comment by 0x008 · 2022-11-24 · in VSCode-Neovim: Use embedded Neovim in VSCode without emulation

…isn't exactly what you want, but what about difftastic?[0] It claims it supports JSON [1] [0] https://github.com/Wilfred/difftastic [1] https://difftastic.wilfred.me.uk/languages_supported.html

comment by return_to_monke · 2022-10-09 · in JSON Crack – A tool that generates graph diagrams from JSON objects

…info, switching to `env GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF=difft git log -p --ext-diff` gives a better picture. [0]: https://github.com/Wilfred/difftastic [1]: https://github.com/dandavison/delta

comment by mfrw · 2022-09-07 · in Difftastic, the fantastic diff

> It's in JS and not Python it's in Rust: https://github.com/Wilfred/difftastic what am i missing?

comment by leeoniya · 2022-07-29 · in Semantic Diff for SQL

Difftastic's wiki also has a breakdown of some structured diff algorithms: https://github.com/Wilfred/difftastic/wiki/Structural-Diffs (I've been working on a similar problem, effectively diffing an XML tree.)

comment by rmccue · 2022-07-29 · in Semantic Diff for SQL

Several threads here point to difftastic: https://github.com/Wilfred/difftastic I know a lot of people who have a lot of hope for diffsitter (or something like it): https://github.com/afnanenayet/diffsitter Personally, I think the reason…

comment by WorldMaker · 2022-07-05 · in What comes after Git

…much smoother process rather than having to depend on Github or any other proprietary service. [1] https://github.com/Wilfred/difftastic

comment by madmax108 · 2022-07-05 · in What comes after Git

…before, but language-specific implementations will likely never work. in case anyone missed it: https://github.com/Wilfred/difftastic

comment by leeoniya · 2022-07-05 · in What comes after Git

There are starting to be more code-aware diff tools. https://github.com/Wilfred/difftastic I'm currently trying this out, but I'm not sure if I'll keep using it.

comment by ansible · 2022-04-11 · in An Open Letter from the CEO of Puppet: Puppet and Perforce

…it looks like it was originally developed by Max Brunsfeld, who also created Tree-sitter. [2] [1]: https://github.com/Wilfred/difftastic/graphs/contributors [2]: https://github.com/tree-sitter/tree-sitter [3]:…

comment by CodeIsTheEnd · 2022-03-29 · in Difftastic: A diff that understands syntax

▲ 983

Difftastic: A diff that understands syntax

story by tempodox · 2022-03-29 · 219 comments