Background

latexdiff is a script which will produce a LaTeX diff between two LaTeX files. The diff output can be compiled to a PDF (or other formats) with blue/red markers for insertions/deletions. However, there are a lot of manual steps to get the two files, do the diff, compile LaTeX, run BibTeX remove temporary files, and so on. git-latexdiff helper automates that, and can be integrated as a subcommand in git.

Usage

For installation, see section below.

• Enter the git repository
• Run git latexdiff yourfile.tex. You must run it with an explicit .tex filename, it can't operate on entire directories. Any other generic git diff arguments for specifying versions should work.
• A .pdf file should be created in your current directory. Filename will be stated. It is possible that existing filenames will be overwritten.

Arguments are passed via environment variables (there isn't a good way to pass options otherwise, also passing options is very rare.) It is easiest to do this via the command line. Example (in bash): V=1 git latexdiff ....

• V=: set to any value to enable verbose mode. Set to "2" to also display output of compiling LaTeX.
• LATEX=: LaTeX program to run (default: pdflatex)
• LATEXDIFF=: set path to latexdiff
• TMPDIR=: temporary directory for compiling the latex
• LDOPTS=: options to latexdiff itself.
• PDFVIEWER=: PDF viewer to run (default: evince)

Steps taken, and cases handled, by this helper:

• Diffs two versions and puts them in a temporary directory
• Runs BibTeX if bibliography command is detected.
• Uses currently checked out version of figures
• Runs LaTeX in non-stop mode, so any errors or missing figures are just ignored.
• Runs LaTeX twice to get references correct.
• Copy output to current directory.
• Have all temporary files placed in a temporary directory that is deleted, so that they never interfere with the current directory.
• Automatically start a PDF viewer with the output if $DISPLAY is set.

Installation and dependencies

This depends on the latexdiff perl script, which you must install yourself separately: http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/support/latexdiff/ This is in various package repositories, for example is in Debian in the latexdiff package. Unfortunately, I can't help in installing on other platforms. One report says it is in macports.

Place the program git-latexdiff-helper somewhere in your PATH. Alternatively, put it anywhere and put the full path to it in the second git config command below:

cp git-latexdiff-helper path/to/somewhere/

Set git-latexdiff-helper executable:

chmod a+x git-latexdiff-helper

Set your git config:

git config --global alias.latexdiff "difftool -t latexdiff"
git config --global difftool.latexdiff.cmd 'git-latexdiff-helper "$LOCAL" "$REMOTE"'

If you want, edit the top of the file to set default PDF viewer or LaTeX command.

Other resources

The latexdiff main page is: http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/support/latexdiff/

This formed the basis for this tool:

http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/1325/using-latexdiff-with-git

This tool is written by Richard Darst and released under the Gnu General Public License version 2 or later.