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Review Changes With Delta

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Published May 2, 2024

Warning

❗ This article is more than six months old. Some things may not work as written.

Whether you’re looking at code or content, it’s helpful to see the changes you’ve made to a file, or to compare a file to a previous version. If you’re working within git, you’re probably familiar with the git diff command. The delta tool gives you more control over how you see what’s different, and you can use it as a standalone tool, or with git.

Delta offers side-by-side diffs with line numbers, syntax highlighting, and built-in navigation support.

What You Need

To complete this tutorial, you need

  • git installed on your local machine.
  • Homebrew installed, which you can do by following the Install Homebrew tutorial.

Installing Delta

To install Delta, use your package manager to install the git-delta package, or get a binary for your OS. If you go the manual route, make sure to place the executable on your system PATH.

Once installed, you add configuration options to your global ~/.gitconfig file:

[core]
    pager = delta

[interactive]
    diffFilter = delta --color-only

[delta]
    navigate = true
    light = true
    side-by-side = true

[merge]
    conflictstyle = diff3

[diff]
    colorMoved = default

With this configuration, you will get side-by-side diffs, rather than the inline diffs, which is great for comparing lots of text changes. Change the light option to false if you use a dark-mode terminal.

To test it out, create a couple of Markdown files:

cat <<EOF > file1.md
This is the first file.
It has two lines.
EOF
cat <<EOF > file2.md
This is the second file.
It has three lines.
Isn't that great?
EOF

With the files created, run delta to compare the files:

delta file1.md file2.md

You’ll see a side-by-side comparison, making it clear what’s changed:

Delta side-by-side comparison
Delta side-by-side comparison

Delta works well as a standalone diff tool, but it integrates with Git’s tooling as well. When you use the git diff command, it’ll invoke the delta command instead of the default view.

Conclusion

Delta improves upon the traditional git diff command. Whether you use it as a standalone tool or as part of your Git workflow, Delta offers a clearer, more informative view of file differences.

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