How to prettify git diff output with diff-so-fancy

I find it quite hard to make sense of the output from git diff. It is somewhat off-putting and ugly for me. 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:

1$~ brew install diff-so-fancy

Configuration

To use diff-so-fancy, you have to set it up globally. Run the following:

1$~ git config --global core.pager "diff-so-fancy | less --tabs=4 -RFX"

This will change your ~/.gitconfig like so

1[core]
2    ... // other settings
3    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.