How to diff PDF files with Git

diff-pdf-files.md

One can use MD5 or plain text diff to see differences in PDF files. If that's not enough, here's how to use diffpdf which knows how to diff based on appearance or words:

• brew install diff-pdf
• edit your ~/.gitconfig to add this:

[difftool "diffpdf"]
  cmd = diff-pdf \"$LOCAL\" \"$REMOTE\"

• then use with:

git difftool --tool=diffpdf your_pdf_file.pdf

I suspect there's maybe some way to force always using a specific difftool for files with a specific extension; in the mean time I'm just using a bash function for this.

Diff PDFs in OSX

$ brew cask install xquartz
$ brew install diff-pdf
$ diff-pdf --view A.pdf B.pdf