lustre

A local, live-reloading diff viewer for git branches, powered by difftastic for structural, syntax-aware diffs.

Point it at a branch and it'll open a side-by-side diff view in your browser, with per-token change highlighting, language detection, and automatic refresh when files change on disk.

Built for small teams that want a lightweight review flow without overhead.

Prerequisites

• Go 1.22+: go.dev/dl
• git
• difftastic: install via cargo install --locked difftastic, or grab a binary from releases. Make sure difft is on your PATH.

Install from source

git clone <your-repo-url> lustre
cd lustre
make build

Move the binary somewhere on your PATH:

mv lustre ~/.local/bin/       # or /usr/local/bin/, or wherever you prefer

Development

Building and linting require the following tools:

• make: used to drive all build and lint tasks.
• Go 1.22+: go.dev/dl
• staticcheck: install with go install honnef.co/go/tools/cmd/staticcheck@latest. Used by make lint for static analysis.
• Biome: installed on demand via npx @biomejs/biome. Used by make fmt and make lint to format and check HTML, CSS, and JS files.

Common targets:

make build    # compile the binary to ./lustre
make test     # run the test suite
make fmt      # auto-format Go and frontend sources
make lint     # run go vet, staticcheck, and biome check
make check    # fmt + lint + test
make install  # build and install to $PREFIX/bin (default /usr/local/bin)
make clean    # remove the built binary

Usage

From inside any git repository:

lustre <branch> [base]

base defaults to main if omitted.

lustre feature/mfa            # diff feature/mfa against main
lustre feature/mfa develop    # diff feature/mfa against develop

This starts a local server, opens your default browser, and watches for file changes. Edit code, save, and the diff view updates automatically. Ctrl+C to stop.

License

lustre is shared under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License Version 3. Find a copy of the full license text in our LICENSE.md file.