git diff - external viewer - get all diff results

Question

Hi,

When external diff is configured, results are displayed per file, i.e. to view differences for the next file one needs to close currently running diff viewer.

Is there a way to make git spawn all diff viewer processes in parallel?

If I just spawn process from within external diff script, apparently git deletes the temporary files it uses for comparison.

So

#!/usr/bin/python
import subprocess
import sys
p = subprocess.Popen(('/usr/bin/meld', sys.argv[2], sys.argv[5]))
#p.wait()

does not work, with meld displaying 'Could not read from '/tmp/.diff_VlLwKF'

However, if I uncomment

#p.wait()

everything works fine, but again, it's sequential spawning, not parallel.

Thanks

Answer 1

I asked a similar question on SO, wanting to open diff files in tabs in BeyondCompare. I came up with this:

for name in $(git diff --name-only $1); do git difftool $1 $name & done

This gets the list of modified files and calls the external diff tool in a background task on each separate file.

Check out the details here and how I make it easy to use. Being new to bash I'd love to hear of any improvements...

Edit 1: added optional param (eg '--staged')
Edit 2: added git alias (see link).