I find it quite hard to make sense of the output from git diff. Let’s just say that it is somewhat off-putting. diff-so-fancy is an open source project to solve this problem and help make your diff much less uglier.
Installation
There are a lot of ways to install it but I prefer to install all my tools with Brew. So run the following in your terminal:
$~ brew install diff-so-fancy
Configuration
To use diff-so-fancy, you have to set it up globally. Run the following:
$~ git config --global core.pager "diff-so-fancy | less --tabs=4 -RFX"
This will change your ~/.gitconfig like so
[core]
... // other settings
pager = diff-so-fancy | less --tabs=4 -RFX
When you run git diff, you will noticed how much of an improvement that diff-so-fancy
brings. There are a few more customizations that can be done. Try it on your own.