Re: git and orgmode: teaching git a bit of orgmode syntax

[Stig Brautaset <stig@brautaset.org>]

Karl Voit <devnull@Karl-Voit.at> writes:

> Unfortunately, git does not handle diffs in a meaningful way. For
> example, when there are sub-hierarchies added or removed, it ends up
> with many diff-lines like the following:
>
> -***** NEXT test with DAVdroid
> +* Lesestoff [1/26]                                        :2read:
>  :PROPERTIES:
> -:CREATED:  [2016-05-08 Sun 12:51]
> +:CREATED: [2012-04-17 Tue 10:39]
> +:ARCHIVE:  %s_archive::* Lesestoff
> +:CATEGORY: reading
>  :END:
>
> The two headings being compared by git are totally unrelated. Git
> did find a match for the :PROPERTIES: and :END: lines and therefore
> assumed that I modified the level five heading "NEXT test with
> DAVdroid" into the first level heading "Lesestoff", not recognizing
> that in fact, there were many org-mode lines moved to the archive
> file, resulting in many deleted lines instead of modified ones.

You may want to try setting =diff.algorithm= (see =man git-config=) to
either =patience= or its variant =histogram=. This Stack Overflow answer
contains an example of how the effects of the diff created with the
patience algorithm, and it looks similar to the case you're describing:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4045017/what-is-git-diff-patience-for#4045087

You may also want to check out the option =diff.compactionHeuristic=,
which is described thus:

,----
| Set this option to true to enable an experimental heuristic that
| shifts the hunk boundary in an attempt to make the resulting patch
| easier to read.
`----

Stig