The other day a colleague noted that (regular) diffs are hard to read: it’s very easy to get the updated lines confused with the original lines (especially if the file is on the right side of your monitor.) Wouldn’t it be easier to have these color coded? I think so, so I wrote it. Diffs could be color coded something like…

So, for your diff viewing pleasure, I present: the BBEdit Diff Codeless Language Module.

Like my other Open Source offerings, this link takes you directly to our Subversion repository. The username is “anon” (without the quotes) and there is no password to access the repository. Your browser may, or may not, give you warnings about the security certificate, since it is self-signed.

Install diff.plist in

~/Library/Application Support/BBEdit/Language Modules

If the Language Modules folder does not exist, create it. Restart BBEdit, then files that end in .diff will be color coded.

This code is licensed under the Creative Commons By Attribution license, and modifications to the plist file are welcome.

Currently only “regular” diffs are properly recognized, as produced by

cvs diff bob.c

I would also really like to get the function popup working, somehow, but was unable to.