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But diff does not exists in a vacuum. It would need to be integrated to IDEs, editor, merge tools, PR tools. You now have to have `patch` understand and depend

But diff does not exists in a vacuum. It would need to be integrated to IDEs, editor, merge tools, PR tools. You now have to have `patch` understand and depend on the details of the syntax of your language. In a way that may break between different versions of diff and patch. Not even starting with variants of a language, different interpretations of how to handle the preprocessor/macros system, different editions of the same language. All that, just to not have to add a trailing comma ?

benatkin 2y ago
Most things like patch would still use line diff. I think I would want this semantic diff in the merge request review and the logs. It could have definitions distributed with the syntax highlighters in language plugins in an editor/IDE, git CLI, and git forge.
- from-nibly 2y ago
  So GitHub, git lab, gutbucket, gittea (and its 50 forks), fossil, and all the other tools should change, not the formatting of the code?
  - benatkin 2y ago
    No, having a concise separator is still preferable to saving a line in a diff.