vdwrap

A simple wrapper around Vimdiff for diffing directory hierarchies with git difftool --dir-diff. It is a Zsh script, so you need that installed.

With vdwrap instead of launching vimdiff once per pair of files Git will launch it only once and you will see each pair in its own tab.

Configuration:

You can configure this as your Git difftool straight up, or you can use it only in combination with --dir-diff. When used without --dir-diff it tries its best to invoke vimdiff the same way git difftool would have done anyway. I haven't noticed any problems but it is a bit hacky.

In any case, put vdwrap somewhere in your $PATH and run

git config --global difftool.vdwrap.cmd 'vdwrap $LOCAL $REMOTE'

If you don't want to put it in your path you can either also run

git config --global difftool.vdwrap.path '/full/path'

or define the difftool using the full path:

git config --global difftool.vdwrap.cmd '/full/path/vdwrap $LOCAL $REMOTE'
git config --global diff.tool vdwrap

If you want to keep Vimdiff as the standard difftool and use the wrapper only with --dir-diff you can define an alias, e.g.:

git config --global alias.dirdiff 'difftool --tool vdwrap --dir-diff'

Usage:

If you configure vdwrap as your difftool you do:

git difftool --dir-diff foo bar
git difftool foo bar

The latter should work just like normal.

Alternatively, using the alias:

git dirdiff foo bar
git difftool foo bar

Since difftool --dir-diff is long-winded you may want to define an alias anyway, so it makes sense to not use vdwrap as your standard difftool.