PATCHVIEW(1) Man pages PATCHVIEW(1)

patchview, gitdiff, gitdiffview, gitshow, gitshowview, svndiff, svndiffview - Without options, show numbered files modified by the patch. With options, behave as filterdiff.

patchview [[-n] | [--line-number]] [[-p n] | [--strip-match=n]] [--strip=n] [--git-prefixes=strip|keep] [--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 ...]}

So what is patchview? It is a wrapper of filterdiff for use with numbered files.

patchview

(without args) is equivalent to: lsdiff --number

patchview -F2-

(or with any other args) is equivalent to: filterdiff -F2- (or whatever arguments are supplied)

There are 4 scripts for working with git repos (gitdiff, gitdiffview, gitshow and gitshowview) and 2 for svn (svndiff and svndiffview).

svndiff
gitdiff

(without args) will give the list of files modified

svndiff -F1
gitdiff -F1

will show the patch of file #1

svndiffview
gitdiffview

pipe all patches through filterdiff to vim - -R (in read-only mode, easy to quit), showing complete patch with color.

svndiffview -F2
gitdiffview -F2

(or any other args) will pipe patch of file #2 to vim - -R

gitshow
gitshowview

This is the same as gitdiff but uses git show instead of git diff.

-n, --line-number

Display the line number that each patch begins at. If verbose output is requested (using -nv), each hunk of each patch is listed as well.

For each file that is modified, a line is generated containing the line number of the beginning of the patch, followed by a Tab character, followed by the name of the file that is modified. If -v is given once, following each of these lines will be one line for each hunk, consisting of a Tab character, the line number that the hunk begins at, another Tab character, the string “Hunk #”, and the hunk number (starting at 1).

If the -v is given twice in conjunction with -n (i.e. -nvv), the format is slightly different: hunk-level descriptive text is shown after each hunk number, and the --number-files option is enabled.

-N, --number-files

File numbers are listed, beginning at 1, before each filename.

-#RANGE, --hunks=RANGE

Only list hunks within 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; either the first or the last in the span may be omitted to indicate no limit in that direction.

--lines=RANGE

Only list hunks that contain lines from the original file that lie 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.

--strip=n

Remove 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, removes the prefixes both for filename matching (when using -i and -x options) and for filename output (similar to --strip). With keep (default), preserves existing behavior. Applies to both Git-specific diffs (binary files, renames, mode changes) and traditional diffs when 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.

--addprefix=PREFIX

Prefix the pathname with PREFIX before displaying it.

-s, --status

Show file additions, modifications and removals. A file addition is indicated by a “+”, a removal by a “-”, and a modification by a “!”.

-E, --empty-files-as-removed

Treat empty files as absent for the purpose of displaying file additions, modifications and removals.

-iPATTERN, --include=PATTERN

Include only files matching PATTERN.

-xPATTERN, --exclude=PATTERN

Exclude files matching PATTERN.

-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 is being executed.

--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.

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

We can make the following one-line script with the name difftotrunk.sh, to view the differences of two directories or svn repos (trunk and .)

diff ../trunk . -ru -x .svn | patchview "$@"
./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 files #3 without hunk #1 (x means that exclude).

Tim Waugh <twaugh@redhat.com>

Package maintainer
02 Jul 2020 patchutils