diffman-git(1)

diffman-git(1) 💅

okay so bestie, welcome to the General Commands Manual page for diffman-git — the manual name is literally right there in the title, folded in cute instead of doing that stiff header line. This whole page is giving “compare manual pages at two git commits, then diff the formatted outputs” energy. No cap.

💖 NAME 💖

diffman-git — compare changes to manual pages line by line. That’s the name and the one-liner, periodt.

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

diffman-git [diff-options ...] [[base-commit] commit]

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

diffman-git formats a manual page at two git(1) commits, and then runs diff(1) on the formatted outputs. Like, it formats first and diffs after — that’s the whole little routine, and it ate.

If commit is not specified, it diffs the working directory against HEAD. If base-commit is not specified, the comparison is done against the previous commit. Very “sensible defaults, main character energy” of it, honestly.

✨ OPTIONS ✨

• -s — report when two files are the same. A little “same bestie!” moment, if you will.
• -Un — output n lines of unified context, and n defaults to 3. Iconic.
• -w — ignore all white space. Periodt.

🎀 ENVIRONMENT 🎀

See man(1). That’s the entire environment section — a tiny little redirect, and honestly? respect.

🍓 EXAMPLES 🍓

here’s the example exactly as it lives in the manual. Code is sacred, so I’m not touching it:

$ MAN_KEEP_FORMATTING= diffman-git 437e4afec6ca | less -R;
--- 437e4afec6ca^:man/man3/sem_open.3
+++ 437e4afec6ca:man/man3/sem_open.3
@@ -14,3 +14,2 @@
-     sem_t *sem_open(const char *name, int oflag);
-     sem_t *sem_open(const char *name, int oflag,
-                     mode_t mode, unsigned int value);
+     sem_t *sem_open(const char *name, int oflag, ...
+                     /* mode_t mode, unsigned int value */ );

see? formatted manual page, diff, and less -R all in one little command line, with MAN_KEEP_FORMATTING= sitting right there with an empty value. Obsessed.

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

diff(1), man(1), git(1), less(1) — that’s the squad.

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mwah 💋 — from the Linux man-pages 6.18 era, dated 2025-05-17, and that’s the whole page, bestie 🫶