PATCHVIEW(1)

📦
version 0.4.5 · 3 versions
, in alpine 3.24, arch rolling, ubuntu stonking

✨ PATCHVIEW(1) ✨

okay bestie, gather round, because this is patchview(1) from the Man pages manual, and she is a whole vibe 💖 She's the queen bee of a little family of scripts, and she's here to make your diffs cute and numbered.

🌸 NAME 🌸

patchview, gitdiff, gitdiffview, gitshow, gitshowview, svndiff, svndiffview — no options? she shows you the numbered files that got modified by the patch. give her options? she lowkey becomes filterdiff. periodt 💅

🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

patchview [[-n] | [--line-number]] [[-p n] | [--strip-match=n]]
          [--strip=n] [--git-prefixes=strip|keep]
          [--git-extended-diffs=exclude|include] [--addprefix=PREFIX]
          [[-s] | [--status]] [[-E] | [--empty-files-as-removed]]
          [[-i PATTERN] | [--include=PATTERN]] [[-x PATTERN] |
          [--exclude=PATTERN]] [[-z] | [--decompress]] [[-# RANGE] |
          [--hunks=RANGE]] [--lines=RANGE] [[-FRANGE] | [--files=RANGE]]
          [[-H] | [--with-filename]] [[-h] | [--no-filename]] [[-v] |
          [--verbose]...] [file...]

patchview {[--help] | [--version] | [--filter ...] | [--grep ...]}

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so like… what even is patchview? bestie, she's a wrapper around filterdiff, built specifically for numbered files. iconic behavior honestly 👑

patchview

with no args at all? that's literally the same as:

lsdiff --number

and then

patchview -F2-

(or with literally any other args, no cap) is equivalent to filterdiff -F2- — or whatever arguments you hand her. she's flexible like that 🫶

now, the family: there are 4 scripts for working with git repos — gitdiff, gitdiffview, gitshow and gitshowview — and 2 for svn — svndiff and svndiffview.

svndiff

gitdiff

no args? you get the list of files modified. that's it, that's the tea ☕

svndiff -F1

gitdiff -F1

this one shows the patch of file #1 🔥

svndiffview

gitdiffview

these two pipe all patches through filterdiff to vim - -R (read-only mode, which means it's easy to quit, thank u), showing you the complete patch with color. aesthetic AND functional 💜

svndiffview -F2

gitdiffview -F2

or any other args you feel like — this pipes the patch of file #2 to vim - -R.

gitshow

gitshowview

same energy as gitdiff, except it uses git show instead of git diff. slay ✨

💅 OPTIONS 💅

  • -n, --line-number — shows the line number where each patch begins. and if you ask for verbose output (like with -nv), every hunk of every patch gets listed too, bestie.

for each modified file, she generates a line with the line number of the beginning of the patch, then a Tab character, then the name of the modified file. if -v is given once, each of those lines gets followed by one line per hunk: a Tab character, the line number the hunk begins at, another Tab character, the string “Hunk #”, and the hunk number (starting at 1).

and if -v is given twice alongside -n (so, -nvv), the format is slightly different: hunk-level descriptive text shows up after each hunk number, and the --number-files option is enabled. different flavor, same snack 😌

  • -N, --number-files — file numbers get listed, starting at 1, right before each filename. cute numbering moment 🔢
  • -#RANGE, --hunks=RANGE — only list hunks inside the specified RANGE. hunks are numbered from 1, and the range is a comma-separated list of numbers or “first-last” spans, optionally preceded by a modifier x which inverts the entire range; you can omit either the first or the last in the span to say "no limit in that direction."
  • --lines=RANGE — only list hunks that contain lines from the original file lying within the specified RANGE. lines are numbered from 1, and the range is a comma-separated list of numbers or “first-last” spans, optionally preceded by a modifier x which inverts the entire range; either the first or the last in the span may be omitted to indicate no limit in that direction.
  • -F=RANGE, --files=RANGE — only list files indicated by the specified RANGE. files are numbered from 1 in the order they appear in the patch input, and the range is a comma-separated list of numbers or “first-last” spans, optionally preceded by a modifier x which inverts the entire range; either the first or the last in the span may be omitted to indicate no limit in that direction.
  • -pn, --strip-match=n — when matching, ignore the first n components of the pathname. bye girl 👋
  • --strip=n — removes the first n components of the pathname before displaying it.
  • --git-prefixes=strip|keep — how to handle a/ and b/ prefixes in Git diff filenames. with strip, she removes the prefixes both for filename matching (when you use -i and -x) and for filename output (similar to --strip). with keep (the default), existing behavior is preserved. this applies to both Git-specific diffs (binary files, renames, mode changes) and traditional diffs when they're part of a Git patch. ⚠️ note: with keep, copy and rename operations are treated as if they had a/ and b/ prefixes, for consistency with other Git operations. the default will change to strip in version 0.5.0 — so heads up, bestie, the future is coming 🫣
  • --git-extended-diffs=exclude|include — controls whether to process Git diffs that have no traditional content hunks. this includes renames, copies, mode-only changes, and binary files. with exclude (default in 0.4.x), these diffs are skipped. with include (default in 0.5.0+), these diffs are processed normally. this option affects file numbering with -N and file filtering with -F.
  • --addprefix=PREFIX — prefix the pathname with PREFIX before displaying it. glow-up for your paths 💫
  • -s, --status — shows file additions, modifications and removals. an addition gets a “+”, a removal gets a “-”, and a modification gets a “!”. visual language, love her.
  • --empty-files-as-absent, --empty-files-as-removed — treat empty files as absent for the purposes of displaying additions, modifications and removals. for example, a file with an empty old version and additions in the new version gets treated as a file addition (+) rather than a modification (!). ⚠️ note: for grepdiff, only the long form is available (-E means --extended-regexp for grepdiff). different script, different rules, iykyk.
  • -iPATTERN, --include=PATTERN — include only files matching PATTERN. gatekeeping, but make it useful ✋
  • -xPATTERN, --exclude=PATTERN — exclude files matching PATTERN. not you, not today 🚫
  • -z, --decompress — decompress files with extensions .gz and .bz2.
  • -H, --with-filename — print the name of the patch file containing each patch.
  • -h, --no-filename — suppress the name of the patch file containing each patch.
  • -v, --verbose — verbose output. for the git and svn wrapper scripts (gitdiff, gitdiffview, gitshow, gitshowview, svndiff, svndiffview), this option shows the full command that's being executed. full transparency, we love that 💖
  • --help — display a short usage message.
  • --version — display the version number of patchview.
  • --filter — behave like filterdiff(1) instead.
  • --grep — behave like grepdiff(1) instead.

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

lsdiff(1), filterdiff(1), grepdiff(1)

🍓 EXAMPLES 🍓

okay so we can make this one-line script called difftotrunk.sh, to view the differences of two directories or svn repos (trunk and .):

diff ../trunk . -ru -x .svn | patchview "$@"

and then, bestie:

./difftotrunk.sh

will show all different files and his number. 💅

./difftotrunk.sh -F3,4

will show the differences of files #3 and #4 only.

./difftotrunk.sh -F3 -#1

will show only hunk #1 of file #3.

./difftotrunk.sh -F3 -#x1

will show the differences of file #3 without hunk #1 (x means that exclude, remember?).

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Tim Waugh <twaugh@redhat.com>

  • Package maintainer

and that's the whole page, bestie!! 💜 This diva lives in patchutils, and this particular version is dated 02 Jul 2020. she's still serving looks. slay, goodbye, mwah 💋✨

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