Difftastic is a structural diff tool that compares files based on their syntax.

https://github.com/Wilfred/difftastic

Probably won't solve all of your problems, but I like to at least change git's default pager to delta.

Beyond Compare, the pro version that does 3-way merges and stuff. I tried them all and its the best for a cheap price if you use it a lot.

My favourite is Meld

I use https://difftastic.wilfred.me.uk/ which is well, fantastic. I have it set up as the default diff for Git and it is really nice.

I use emacs's magit for git stuff (the bulk of things) and emacs's ediff for most other things.

Good if you know emacs, but hard to recommend using it for someone who doesn't.

EDIT: Oh, one exotic utility that's useful for some rare cases, not really for interactive merging of code

wdiff for word-level diffing. Most code can reasonably be diffed on a line-by-line basis, but that's not true for some text formats, which can have very long lines. Human, natural language in text format, is one good example.

I'm mainly interested in making code reviews a little easier to manage.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned yet, here: All future diffs become much easier to read if the team agrees to use a very strict lint tool.

I know, I know. "Code changes should be small." I've already voiced that to my team, yet here we are.

I understand from another Lemmy thread that the tradition is to toss the offending team members' laptop into the nearest large body of water.

I like vimdiff, since it's fair quick to collapse and expand code chunks if you know the keyboard shortcuts. Actually, since it's vim, knowing the keyboard shortcuts is the entire game lol.

I usually have vimdiff open in a horizontal pane in tmux, then use the other horizontal pane to look at other code that the change references. Could I optimize and have everything in a single vim session? Sure, but at that point, I'd also want cscope set up to find references within vim, and I'm now trivial steps away from a full IDE in vim.

.... which people do have, and more power to them. But alas, I don't have the luxury of fastidious optimization of my workflow to that degree.

I like kdiff3, vimdiff, and ... intellij. Kdiff3 and intellij do "directories / file structures" too but I'm not sure the level you want it. Neither are cli though.

Not a diff, but a merge tool.

https://mergiraf.org/introduction.html

Kdiff3

alias diff='diff --width=$COLUMNS --suppress-common-lines --side-by-side --color=always'

I like the merge and diff tool integrated in the various Jetbrain IDEs.

I've been using SmartGit for about a decade now. While I don't typically need a git GUI, I do appreciate it's diff'ing and 3-way merge.

It's free for open source use and they do have a lifetime license option to avoid the subscription for commercial use.

I've been using delta for a while, alongside lazygit, and enjoying it.

I just have a script that has a few commands with presets to see the differences I care about:

Short diff: git diff -w --ignore-blank-lines --color-words='\w+|.'
Slightly longer diff: git diff -w --ignore-blank-lines

Gnu diff for the basics or if I want something automating diffs, beyond compare or winmerge if I'm stuck with windows for gui tools.

The tortoise diff tool when doing most stuff.

Winmerge if I am manually comparing directories (it can do images/pdfs too!)

For comparing and selectively applying changes in many files, WinMerge is my tool of choice. But for resolving merge conflicts, I go with Tortise Git.

yeah, I was also after a CLI tool for that because my goto is a 3-way merge in a GUI editor at this moment. I just didn't find any CLI tool that beats that in usability and visuals (syntax+diff highlighting)

For simple diffs, my favorites are difftastic and Delta.

I use GitLab diffs in single-file-view mode, TortoiseGit Merge when it exceeds what GitLab can reasonably display (including block indent changes I can ignore in TortoiseGit Merge or moves I can better track), and WinMerge (previously I used KDiff) for manual copy-paste text diffing (like copying blocks from the code change diff to compare similar, categorically similar code, or code moves, etc)

p4merge

Removed