From: Toon Claes <toon@iotcl.com>
To: David Yang <mmyangfl@gmail.com>, git@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [BUG] git diff go mad compared to diffutils
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 2026 07:57:29 +0200 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <87cxtedtx2.fsf@dev.null.iotcl.com.invalid> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAAXyoMPJ1P6RCRQgPpZwZjFZJW8Y07paXJD3=8LXtD3KuVnWnQ@mail.gmail.com>
David Yang <mmyangfl@gmail.com> writes:
> Hello Git community,
>
> I'm using git 2.53.0 on Debian testing. During preparing a new version
> for https://lore.kernel.org/all/20261001204851.2576101-3-mmyangfl@gmail.com/
> , I've noticed git generated unusual distorted patch
> https://github.com/yangfl/linux/commit/01e2de4664f60528dd9b4f15b5995fc5cb0e7b4f
> . As you may see, GitHub diff is distorted as well.
>
> With diffutils 3.12 (diff -u old new) I can get nice diff file with
> delection only, just like the v2 patch.
I think this depends on the used diff algorithm. By default git uses
'myers', this isn't really great. If you run:
git diff --diff-algorithm=histogram \
9142c2f8f84bf4eafe23e9d68b6ba016a60300c0 \
01e2de4664f60528dd9b4f15b5995fc5cb0e7b4f \
-- drivers/net/dsa/motorcomm/chip.c
The diff is cleaner.
> Should this be considered a bug?
So I don't consider this a bug. Git is just stuck at an ancient default
algorithm.
--
Laters,
Toon
prev parent reply other threads:[~2026-10-13 5:57 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 2+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2026-10-09 2:38 [BUG] git diff go mad compared to diffutils David Yang
2026-10-13 5:57 ` Toon Claes [this message]
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