How to diff PDF files with Git

how-to-diff-pdf-files-with-git-and-diffpdf.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 --view \"$LOCAL\" \"$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.

Also useful in .bash_profile:

function git_diff_pdf {
  yes | git difftool --tool=diffpdf $1
}

then you can use it like:

git_diff_pdf your_pdf_file.pdf