.gitattribute file not working as expected

Question

I have the following .gitattributes file in my project

*.txt -diff

This works as expected, it ignores .txt files when I do a git diff. However when I change this to

*.txt diff=test

and add

[diff "test"]
    colorMoved = plain

to my .git/config file, it does not work. The colors of git diff do not change.

If I add

[diff]
    colorMoved = plain

It does changes the color in git diff. So my conclusion is that the .gitattributes file is being used and the .git/config is working as well. However the combination does not work. Any ideas what I am doing wrong?

I am using git version 2.33.0.windows.2

Answer 1

Setting the diff algorithm works for attributes but not for colors or anything else.

git help config shows that the config key is diff.colorMoved but there is no diff.<name>.colorMoved.

Ability to set the diff algorithm per attribute was added somewhere between Git 2.36 and 2.42. Compare the docs for 2.36 and 2.42.