How to improve git’s diff highlighting?

The word-diff suggested in the other answer isn’t exactly what gitlab/github do. To get same effect, you can use diff-highlight script that is distributed with git.

1. First find path to diff-highlight script. It varies between systems, and is not usually in $PATH. You can find it with your package manager, for example:

   1. Fedora: rpm -ql git | grep diff-highlight
   2. Debian/Ubuntu/Mint: dpkg -L git | grep diff-highlight
   3. Archlinux: pacman -Ql git | grep diff-highlight

2. Now, execute the following two commands, which will add to your ~/.gitconfig the necessary settings:

   $ git config --global core.pager 'perl /usr/share/git/diff-highlight/diff-highlight | less'
   $ git config --global interactive.difffilter 'perl /usr/share/git/diff-highlight/diff-highlight'
   

   I’m using perl here instead of calling the script directly because some distros, it seems, do not set executable bit on the script. IMO this is a package bug which should be reported. Anyway, this answer should work regardless.

Now log, diff, show commands should show difference word-by-word. Screenshot: