How to get vimdiff to highlight changes when using jj split?

[f0lie]

I am trying to split a commit. Since meld is broken on WSL2 (for me at least), I am using vimdiff instead. The problem is that I can't tell where my changes are when I am trying to split a commit. On the right and left sides, it's all just black-and-white text.

[f0lie]

https://gist.github.com/ilyagr/5d6339fb7dac5e7ab06fe1561ec62d45

glen in the discord very helpfully pointed out this link. If you follow this guide, jj split highlights the differences.

[chooglen]

The link came from https://github.com/martinvonz/jj/blob/main/docs/config.md. Thanks @ilyagr for the pointers.

I wonder what the underlying issue is. Does vimdiff have poor directory-diffing support?

[f0lie]

Looking at the shell file, it seems like it's using the plugin DirDiff to enable "recursive" vimdiff on two dictionaries.

So it does seem like vimdiff is geared towards diffing only two files. Although, I don't use vimdiff enough to say that for certain.

Note that I only have a single file that I was trying to split. Even when I open the same file on both sides, it still didn't highlight the results.

[ilyagr]

Does vimdiff have poor directory-diffing support?

It has no such support at all. We could work around that in jj by providing pairs of files to the difftool, but that requires thinking about how to specify that in configuration.

I will also update that gist with a hacky way to open each pair of files in a separate tab (using another Vim plugin).

[ilyagr]

Actually, I would now recommend https://github.com/balki/vimtabdiff, which is a python script rather than a Vim plugin.

I will at some point include that in https://gist.github.com/ilyagr/5d6339fb7dac5e7ab06fe1561ec62d45 in addition to DirDiff that it already talks about. (DirDiff would be better for diffs with more than a few changed files, but apart from that I prefer vimtabdiff).