Making visual difference between changed and added/removed lines

[sskras]

Thanks for the useful tool. I am newbie, and use it to highlight unified diffs.

I see that by default delta colorizes background for all changed lines. With --diff-highlight however no background seems to be colorized. Eg. comparing my Proxmox VM configurations:

I would like some hybrid solution, however. Eg. by colorizing background only of the added/removed lines (in default mode).

Or at least to add coloring only from the start to the end of the line (maybe including the initial - or +).
Eg. mock up for the --diff-highlight mode:

Is there any possibilities already built into the tool, or some issue created about that, or should I file an one?

[sskras]

PS. Oh, I am running delta 0.17.0 built on Debian 12 using pkgsrc.

[dandavison]

Hi @sskras, --diff-highlight is specifically for emulating a perl script known as "diff highlight" that is distributed with git.

$ delta --help
...
      --diff-highlight
          Emulate diff-highlight.

          (https://github.com/git/git/tree/master/contrib/diff-highlight)

Delta has many options for styling diffs, use delta --help to view the full manual, but here are some entries from the short help:

$ delta -h | rg --no-line-number --json -A1 '(minus|plus|zero)' | delta
      --keep-plus-minus-markers
          Prefix added/removed lines with a +/- character, as git does
      --line-numbers-minus-style <STYLE>
          Style string for line numbers in the old (minus) version of the file
          [default: auto]
      --line-numbers-plus-style <STYLE>
          Style string for line numbers in the new (plus) version of the file
          [default: auto]
      --line-numbers-zero-style <STYLE>
          Style string for line numbers in unchanged (zero) lines [default:
          auto]
      --minus-empty-line-marker-style <STYLE>
          Style string for removed empty line marker [default: "normal auto"]
      --minus-emph-style <STYLE>
          Style string for emphasized sections of removed lines [default:
      --minus-non-emph-style <STYLE>
          Style string for non-emphasized sections of removed lines that have
          an emphasized section [default: minus-style]
      --minus-style <STYLE>
          Style string for removed lines [default: "normal auto"]
      --plus-emph-style <STYLE>
          Style string for emphasized sections of added lines [default: "syntax
      --plus-empty-line-marker-style <STYLE>
          Style string for added empty line marker [default: "normal auto"]
      --plus-non-emph-style <STYLE>
          Style string for non-emphasized sections of added lines that have an
          emphasized section [default: plus-style]
      --plus-style <STYLE>
          Style string for added lines [default: "syntax auto"]
      --zero-style <STYLE>
          Style string for unchanged lines [default: "syntax normal"]```