layout	page
title	`git diff` Support for SQLite Databases
description	In case there's literally anyone else in the world other than me that needs it.
published_at	Fri Jan 12 23:02:36 PDT 2024

The following teaches git how to convert an SQLite database into text that can be usefully diffed:

# .gitconfig / .git/config
[diff "sqlite3"]
    binary = true
    textconv = echo .dump | sqlite3

All that's left is teaching git how to recognize SQLite files. I'm not aware of any way to teach it about magic bytes or the file command¹ so I've resorted to pattern matching:

# .gitattributes
*.db diff=sqlite3

(originally)

Footnotes

Please write in if you do! ↩