git-merge-driver VS diffsitter

You could make a custom merge driver for the conflicting file: https://github.com/Praqma/git-merge-driver

I investigated the option of using a custom git merge driver for a project where we were planning to version control a bunch of data files using git.

Here's a proof of concept python merge driver I bashed together at the time to auto-merge JSON objects: https://github.com/fcostin/jsonmerge_git_merge_driver

This never went anywhere near production, but it was very easy to put together something basic.

One complication with using a custom merge driver, as discussed by https://github.com/Praqma/git-merge-driver , is that they need to be configured inside the `.git/config` of the repo, which itself is not version controlled. So there's an additional config management overhead to rolling that out to everyone in a machine. Additionally, if outsourcing hosting for git repos, it may not be supported to install and configure a custom merge driver for merges conducted by the hosting platform (e.g. merges created by github.com pull request workflow).

One idea I had at the time was using external schema files (e.g. JSON schema for JSON files) to help guide/constrain the result of the merge. I never implemented it, but it should be possible. If the schemas were also version controlled in the same git repo that stores the data, you'd need to figure out which one (and which version) to load when resolving a merge conflict of a data file. There doesn't seem to be a well-supported robust way for a merge driver script to discover the source and destination branches, but there are some potentially fragile ways of doing it that work some of the time.

Or https://github.com/afnanenayet/diffsitter. I've tried both and I like them. No preference or notable opinions on them yet!

For git diff's I've been using https://github.com/afnanenayet/diffsitter

One more tree-sitter based diffing tool - diffsitter

https://github.com/afnanenayet/diffsitter

Several threads here point to difftastic: https://github.com/Wilfred/difftastic

I know a lot of people who have a lot of hope for diffsitter (or something like it): https://github.com/afnanenayet/diffsitter

Personally, I think the reason most "good" semantic diff tools are proprietary is that they are huge amounts of effort that are mostly "hacks" and "heuristics" bandaged together in ways that people don't want to let out how the sausage was made.

But I also "general, language agnostic AST-based semantic diff" is a mountain peak we cannot reach (probably ever), and I believe my experiments found an interesting local maxima that people are maybe sleeping on (lexer-based diffs rather than parser-based diffs): https://github.com/WorldMaker/tokdiff

https://github.com/afnanenayet/diffsitter there are quiet a few projects such as this one, attempting to solve the issue. :)

There’s an interesting project in the semantic diff/merge space that I have been keeping an eye out for https://github.com/afnanenayet/diffsitter

I have never used any of them, but it look like tree-sitter based diff tools are exactly what you are searching for (like difftastic, gumtree or diffsitter).

I believe Unison is the only attempt to do this at a programming language/environment level.

For Git diffs, there is Diffsitter, which uses Tree Sitter to generate semantic diffs of code files: https://github.com/afnanenayet/diffsitter

I have not used it, but it is high on my todo list.

Looks great, I'll try it! FYI, there is a very similar project called diffsitter https://github.com/afnanenayet/diffsitter