How do I change the Gitweb default diff format to `--color-words`?

Question

I want gitweb to output the same diff format as git diff --color-words. Does anybody know how I can do this? I looked at HTML::FromANSI but couldn't get it working with git diff --color-words from the command line.

Answer 1

How did you use HTML::FromANSI? Because it works for me, using the following command worked as intended

git diff --color-words HEAD^ HEAD |
perl -wle '
use HTML::FromANSI; 
my @lines = <STDIN>; 
foreach my $line (@lines) {
    chomp $line;
    print ansi2html($line); 
}' > tmp.html

Although if you want usable output, and not barely visible white text on black background, you would probably need to configure HTML::FromANSI. The above scriptlet is just proof of concept code (ans not in best style).

---

BTW I am not sure about quality of HTML::FromANSI module; it didn't install (using cpan) for me without force (but it might be problem with Term::VT102::Boundless this module requires).

ansi2html subroutine have problems with some lines (I think lines with embedded / trailing end-of-line character, and empty line / string), producing Use of uninitialized value in concatenation (.) or string at .../HTML/FromANSI.pm line 353, <STDIN> line NN. warning. That's why I had to chomp lines (and that might be the problem you had with making HTML::FromANSI work).

Also the HTML produced by this module is quite horrid, using outdated and deprecated <font face='...' style ='...'> tag together with modern <span style='...'> tag; also I don't see an option to use CSS instead of inline style.