scrolling down git diff from mac terminal

Question

I am using git on terminal on OS X 10 Yosemite.

When I do git diff I get long list of changes and sometimes I just need to scroll to the end but I couldn't figure out a way to do that other than to hold the keydown on MacBook pro and then it scrolls slowly.

if I press FN+down key then it does not scroll unless I have made the scroll down journey already down using the down button, but does not go further down...

any advice will be appreciate this is very annoying... :(

Answer 1

git diff uses the same pager as less Unix command.

• Use keys d and u to go down / up half pages (forward / backward technically)
• Jump to last line: G
• Use h if you want to display the help

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Another trick is storing the diff as a patch file like they used to do in the email days! Then you can open up the patch in any program (Sublime has syntax highlight red/green)

Some examples:

git diff master > ~/patch

git show someCommitSHA > ~/patch

git diff master myBranch -- *.js *.css > ~/patch patch of js & css diff from master

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git apply ~/patch

Normally you would use the patch by applying the diff, but you can just open the file in any text editor. It's useful if you don't want to make a full commit out of your diff, but still want to use it somewhere else or send it to a friend

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You can also use git diff master | grep -C 2 someKeyword to show diff +/- 2 lines around some keyword

Answer 2

git config --global core.pager "less -+\$LESS -RS"

On my new macOS laptop, that got the git log scroll working as I'd expect (page up / page down buttons working, color, wheel scroll).

Why does this work? Per the git-config manpage:

Note that git sets the LESS environment variable to FRSX if it is unset when it runs the pager.

Per the less manpage:

-X Disables sending the termcap initialization and deinitialization strings to the terminal. This is sometimes desirable if the deinitialization string does something unnecessary, like clearing the screen.

I don't actually know what any of that means, but that X breaks page up / page down / scroll wheel.

-F Causes less to automatically exit if the entire file can be displayed on the first screen.

If you don't have X, then F breaks when there's no paging, presumably because less exits immediately and something prevents it from printing directly to the terminal.