gitdiffview, gitshowview, svndiffview display -h/-v output in view not on console

[BrianInglis]

Could we please bypass view when displaying gitdiffview, gitshowview, svndiffview -h/-v output?

[sergiomb2]

I'm not sure I understood the request — do you want to print the -v right in the header?
I ended up creating a wrapper script that not only solves this issue but also centralizes and organizes the scripts.

#143

[BrianInglis]

I am referring to -h/-v help/version output which normally displays on terminal screens, but piped to vim -R adds delay and appears unfriendly to me.

For example gitdiffview --help displays only a few lines without much detail, and gitdiffview --version dumps git diff help to stderr if not run in a repo directory, and pipes one filterdiff version line to vim -R.

And vim -R does not always exit cleanly, requiring a terminal reset to restore the screen!

Despite my being a *g*vim user, I am not a fan of vim -R, nor view, which seems even more limited and less reliable (quits as it does not like pipes nor some .vimrc profile commands!?), although described as similar to vim -R.

[sergiomb2]

Hi, sorry for the detail and thanks for the report.
Ah, okay, , I’ve understood the problem but -v with not --version, is --verbose and -h is not --help

Anyway, if gitdiffview is not run in a repository directory, it can cause an issue. I’ll check if there’s something I can do about it.

In #143, I added an option to read the editor from the environment.
Currently, it only reads the EDITOR variable, or uses the default vim.
Any suggestions on how to handle environment variables?

[BrianInglis]

Also please do not pipe to a pager if output is not a tty: it's annoying in pipelines!

Any command that ends up running git dumps help if not in a repo dir.

To be complete, you could use ${VISUAL:-${EDITOR:-vim}}; check if it is executable in the PATH, or use vim, or vi; for example use:

for e in ${VISUAL:-${EDITOR:-vim}} vim vi # or $VISUAL $EDITOR vim vi 
do
        type $e > /dev/null 2>&1 && break    # allow aliases or functions
done
if [ -z "$e" ]        # anti-vim/vi fanatic ;^>
then
        ...
else
        ...
fi

or equivalent in python/perl; use option -R if it contains vi; if it contains emacs, append --eval '(setq view-read-only t)' (don't know much about emacs).

[sergiomb2]

For example gitdiffview --help displays only a few lines without much detail, and gitdiffview --version dumps git

my next step will be improve usage of gitdiff, gitdiffview, gitshow, gitshowview, svndiff and svndiffview