Re: 'git diff' against files outside a git repo

On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 3:30 PM, Elijah Newren [off-list ref] wrote:

On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 4:23 PM, Avery Pennarun [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

I'm interested in using 'git diff' on some files that aren't actually
inside a git repo at all.  Specifically, the --color-words and
--word-diff-regex are really cool and I happen to have a use for them
on files that aren't stored verbatim in git.  As a whole, git's
implementation of diff seems to be the fastest-moving one out there,
so I'd rather use it instead of another random diff implementation.

<snip>

quoted

Is there already a way to get 'git diff' to do this?

If not, would it be sensible to extend git-diff to do comparison
between two outside files?

Isn't this what git diff --no-index ... does?

Aha, that was exactly what I wanted. :)

Oddly, 'git diff file1 file2' *doesn't* work when file1 and file2 are
in a working tree; git tries to diff something, apparently, but I
don't know what.  When you're outside a working tree, it works.  And
your "--no-index" suggestion is what makes it work even when you're in
a working tree.

Thanks to you and Brandon for your help.  I guess I'll try to submit a
patch to the git-diff manpage to make this type of usage more obvious.

Have fun,

Avery