How to turn side-by-side view off for a single command?

[jakeboone02]

Is there a way I can pipe raw git diff output to delta and turn side-by-side view off if side-by-side = true is configured in my .gitconfig? This is the full config file:

[core]
	pager = delta
[interactive]
	diffFilter = delta --color-only
[delta]
	navigate = true
	side-by-side = true
[merge]
	conflictstyle = diff3
[diff]
	colorMoved = default

I thought I could run something like this:

git diff HEAD~1..HEAD | delta --side-by-side=false
# or
cat somefile.diff | delta --side-by-side=false

...but the --side-by-side flag doesn't accept values:

error: The value 'false' was provided to '--side-by-side' but it wasn't expecting any more values

EDIT:

I just saw the side-by-side page on the website, but this "deactivate" command didn't seem to have any effect:

export DELTA_FEATURES=+side-by-side # activate
export DELTA_FEATURES=+             # deactivate

Also tried these with no luck:

DELTA_FEATURES='' git diff HEAD~1..HEAD
git diff HEAD~1..HEAD | DELTA_FEATURES='' delta

[weirdgiraffe]

It works as expected, if you have this feature turned off by default, i.e. in your git config you should have:

core]
	pager = delta
[interactive]
	diffFilter = delta --color-only
[delta]
	navigate = true
[merge]
	conflictstyle = diff3
[diff]
	colorMoved = default

Then you can go and do diff in a single view mode:

git diff HEAD~1..HEAD

And if you want side by side, then just do

DELTA_FEATURES=+side-by-side git diff HEAD~1..HEAD

[jakeboone02]

Right, but I'm looking for a way to turn it off, overriding a .gitconfig that has it turned on.

I don't want it off by default, just every now and then.

[dandavison]

Hm, yes I've documented my current solution at https://dandavison.github.io/delta/tips-and-tricks/toggling-delta-features.html but, yes, it currently requires side-by-side to not be set in git config.

Definitely room for improvement here, regarding the priority / clashes, and perhaps someone could add a command to delta itself that spits out appropriate shell code to be eval'd.

[weirdgiraffe]

I just use aliases gdiff for normal diff and gsdiff for side by side diff.

[th1000s]

Related to --no-side-by-side and similar "enable-only-flags", there is a long-standing open issue in the clap command line parser delta uses: Add support for automatic negation flags: clap-rs/clap#815.

[weirdgiraffe]

I personally have an opinion that flags should be off by default. Because it's intuitive and consistent. So I'm not a big fan of adding --no-whatever flags. What I would like to is to be able to specify an alias in git config for side by side diff and simple diff. But it seems that current way of integration doesn't allow it

[dandavison]

Like this?

[alias]
    diff-side-by-side = -c delta.features=side-by-side diff

[weirdgiraffe]

Oh! Thank you very very much

[almereyda]

Looking forward to any workaround that might come up which allows to temporarily disable side by side diffs for a delta configuration that has them set up by default.