Putting It All Together

You've built every layer:

Beyond:

• Word-level diff (git diff --word-diff): finer granularity within changed lines
• Diff statistics (git diff --stat): summarize per-file
• 3-way merge: combine two changes onto a common base (next: build-git's merge lesson)
• Semantic diff for specific languages: e.g., diff XML by structure, JSON by keys

Diffing is the foundation of:

• Version control (git, hg, svn)
• Code review tools (GitHub, Gerrit, Phabricator)
• Configuration management (Ansible drift detection)
• Database schema migrations (sqitch, flyway)
• Document collaboration (Word track changes)

You now understand all of them.