The compare-cooking.perl script is meant to help viewing the differences between periodical "What's cooking" messages, and can be used as an external diff driver by: $ git config diff.whatscooking.command ./compare-cooking.perl to produce this section in your .git/config [diff "whatscooking"] command = ./compare-cooking.perl You can use e.g. $ git log -p --ext-diff whats-cooking.txt $ git show --ext-diff whats-cooking.txt to review the history.