Diffsitter: A tree-sitter based AST difftool to get meaningful semantic diffs
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Submission timeline
2007–2026One slot for every year since HN launched. Height is that year's peak points; orange marks a 100+ point or 50+ comment breakout. Select a bar to open its strongest thread.
First comments on top threads
HN comment orderHey guys, author of the project here. I'll admit I was a bit surprised to see this on the front page, I want to say that this is very much alpha software (I very deliberately can't let it hit 1.0 yet), so definitely very rough around the edges. I've been very busy with work recently so I've definitely had a lull in my open source contributions, but I hope that I can get back on track soon (TM). Right now…
If you're looking for something more complete and actively maintained, check out https://github.com/GumTreeDiff/gumtree. (I evaluated semantic diff tools for use in Brokk but I ultimately went with standard textual diff; the main hangup that I couldn't get past is that semantic diff understandably works very poorly when you have a syntactically invalid file due to an in-progress edit.)
The first top-level comment from each of the four biggest threads, in HN’s own order. Excerpts are shortened; open a comment for full context.
- Breakout years
- 2
- Total points
- 368
- Total comments
- 99
100+ points or 50+ comments
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
Every submission
| Date | Title as submitted | By | Points | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021-07-18 | Diffsitter: A tree-sitter based AST difftool to get meaningful semantic diffsFirst breakout · Best thread | todsacerdoti | 213 | 53 |
| 2025-03-07 | Diffsitter, a tree-sitter based AST difftool to get meaningful semantic diffs | cosmojg | 4 | 0 |
| 2025-07-10 | Diffsitter – A Tree-sitter based AST difftool to get meaningful semantic diffsLatest 20+ point return | mihau | 151 | 46 |