Where can I find the patience diff implemented?

Question

It is well-answered on this site that Bram Cohen's patience diff is found in bazaar as the default diff and as an option with git diff, but I am finding it difficult to source an independent standalone program that implements this particular diff algorithm.

For example I'd like to apply patience diff to perforce diffs, and it's pretty clear with the canonical "frobnitz" code example how patience diff is better:

The terminal on the right has invoked the git diff with the --patience flag.

I also have set up the diff-highlight perl script, whose job it is to invert colors on matched-up lines between the first and last different sections of those lines. The left side has an example where this doesn't quite help so much but I'll let it slide because at least there is that semicolon there... Anyway, making improvements to the diff-highlight script is not the subject of this question.

In addition to the question of where to find a standalone patience diff, if anybody knows how to make perforce p4 use an external diff program, that's also something that has to be done.

Answer 1

For a javascript implementation, with enhancements to PatienceDiff to determine the lines that likely moved (dubbed "PatienceDiffPlus"), see https://github.com/jonTrent/PatienceDiff.

Answer 2

It's perhaps not as ideal as I'd like it, but the solution is perfectly good from a practical perspective (and thats a damn good perspective to have).

git diff --no-index --patience file1 file2 does the job. (thanks @StevenPenny)

$P4DIFF variable defines the external diff... we just stuff git diff --patience --no-index into that.