Incremental Diff

Incremental Diff lets you review any git diff in VS Code file by file, the way GitHub pull requests do: tick Viewed on each file, and when a file changes afterwards, see only what changed since you reviewed it.

It works on any git diff: a branch against its base, a range of commits, staged or unstaged changes, or the work tree against any revision. No pull request, remote, or account is needed.

Getting started

1. Install Incremental Diff from a VSIX (see Install).
2. Open a folder inside a git repository.
3. Run Incremental Diff: Open Branch Changes from the Command Palette to review everything your branch changes, or Incremental Diff: Open Diff… to type git diff arguments.
4. Open the Incremental Diff icon in the Activity Bar. Click a file to open its diff, and tick its checkbox once you have reviewed it.

Choosing a diff

Open Diff… takes arguments exactly as git diff does. Recent inputs are offered below the input box; the ✕ button removes one from the history.

An omitted side of a range means HEAD. Paths go after -- (main... -- src docs); a bare word that names no revision is also taken as a path, like git does. Paths are relative to the repository root. Options that do not change the output format, such as -w, -M50%, or --diff-filter=AM, are passed through to git. A leading git diff is ignored, so you can paste a whole command.

When the right side is the work tree, untracked files (not ignored) are listed as added.

Open Branch Changes is a shortcut for --merge-base <base>: everything since your branch left its base, including uncommitted and untracked work. The base is incrementalDiff.baseBranch if set; otherwise the default branch of the upstream or origin remote (upstream/HEAD, origin/HEAD, then main or master on those remotes), and finally a local main or master.

Only one review is open at a time. It is reopened automatically when the window reloads.

Reviewing

The Changed Files view lists the changed files as a folder tree (single-child folders are compacted) or, with View as List, as a flat list. Each file shows its status — Added, Modified, Deleted, Renamed (with ← old/path), Copied, Type changed — using the familiar git colors. The view's message counts reviewed files, and the Activity Bar badge counts the files still to review.

• Click a file to open its diff. Added and deleted files are compared with an empty document.
• Tick a file's checkbox to mark it reviewed. Tick a folder to mark every file below it; untick it to clear them all. A folder is ticked when all of its files are reviewed.
• Open All Changes (title bar) opens every file in one multi-file diff editor. Open Unreviewed Changes (… menu) shows only files not yet reviewed.
• Mark Reviewed and Next (✓ in the diff editor title) marks the focused file reviewed and, in a single-file diff, opens the next file to review. In the multi-file diff editor it marks the file whose editor has focus.
• Right-click a file for Open Full Diff, Open Changes Since Review, and Open File.

Changes since review

When you mark a file reviewed, Incremental Diff saves a snapshot of its right side. If the file changes later, it is unticked automatically and shown as changed since review (an amber M•-style badge).

• Clicking such a file opens snapshot → current: only what changed since you reviewed it. Toggle Full Diff / Changes Since Review (editor title) switches to the whole diff and back. Set incrementalDiff.openChangesSinceReview to false to open the full diff by default.
• Open Changes Since Review (title bar) opens every changed-since-review file in one multi-file diff editor.
• Tick the file again to review it at its new state.

A reviewed file whose change disappears from the diff drops out of the list; its mark returns if the same content comes back. Clear Reviewed Marks (… menu) forgets every mark of the current review.

Where review state lives

Reviewed marks are stored in VS Code's workspace state, separately for each workspace folder and each diff (equivalent spellings such as --staged and --cached share one review), and survive reloads.

Snapshots are ordinary git blobs written with git hash-object -w. To keep git gc from pruning them, Incremental Diff points a private ref, refs/incremental-diff/<id>, at a commit whose tree holds all snapshots of that review. These refs are never pushed by a normal git push; Clear Reviewed Marks deletes the review's ref. To remove all of them:

git for-each-ref --format='%(refname)' refs/incremental-diff/ | xargs -n1 git update-ref -d

Refreshing

The review refreshes after files are saved or changed on disk and when the git state changes (commits, checkouts, staging), waiting incrementalDiff.refreshDelay milliseconds after the last change. Checkboxes and expanded folders are kept. Refresh in the title bar refreshes immediately.

File contents of commits and the index are opened through VS Code's built-in git extension, so the usual editor features work on them. If the git extension is disabled, Incremental Diff reads them from git directly.

Settings

Keyboard shortcuts

Incremental Diff contributes no default keybindings. Bind the commands you use most in Keyboard Shortcuts, for example:

[
  { "key": "ctrl+alt+r", "command": "incrementalDiff.markReviewedAndNext", "when": "incrementalDiff.activeFile" },
  { "key": "ctrl+alt+b", "command": "incrementalDiff.openBranchChanges" },
  { "key": "ctrl+alt+t", "command": "incrementalDiff.toggleChangesSinceReview", "when": "incrementalDiff.activeFileChanged" }
]

Useful when contexts: incrementalDiff.active (a review is open), incrementalDiff.activeFile (the focused editor shows a file of the review), and incrementalDiff.activeFileChanged (that file changed since review).

Install

Download vscode-incremental-diff-<version>.vsix from the releases, or build it yourself (see below), then run Extensions: Install from VSIX… or:

code --install-extension vscode-incremental-diff-0.1.0.vsix

Development

npm install
npm test
npm run build

Press F5 in VS Code to launch an Extension Development Host. npm run package type-checks, bundles, and creates a VSIX.

Known limitations

• Submodule changes are not listed.
• Combined diffs of three or more revisions and --no-index are not supported.
• Snapshot refs appear in git log --all and similar views of every ref.
• The multi-file diff editor cannot be scrolled by extensions, so Mark Reviewed and Next there only marks the focused file.