[hn_throwaway_99]

I don't see why you think it would make diffs painful. If anything, in my experience it makes diffs easier because each chunk can be put on it's own, independent line so that if you change anything it is constrained to the relevant line.

[dragonwriter]

It makes diffs harder because maintaining the indentation rule (sometimes, depending on what is on other lines) requires changing every line of the query if you go from “INNER JOIN” (equally, outer/right/cross join) to “LEFT JOIN” (equally, full join).

[fiddlerwoaroof]

Nearly every diff tool has -w for this, though: main main annoyance with GitHub is that I can’t enable this as the default diff mode.

[sodapopcan]

Yep—`-w` is the default when I blame in my editor but ya, github is really the problem.

[majewsky]

At least GitHub now has a UI for enabling it. I remember the dark ages when you had to put ?w=1 on the URL like some sort of animal.

[hn_throwaway_99]

The indentation rules never change. Fortunately, "SELECT" at six letters is as long as the longest first word that starts a clause, which is why when doing, for example, a "LEFT JOIN" you line up the "LEFT" and not the "JOIN, e.g.

  SELECT a.foo
    FROM alpha a
    JOIN beta b ...

would become

  SELECT a.foo
    FROM alpha a
    LEFT JOIN beta b ...

Any diff tool correctly highlights the only change is the LEFT.

[sodapopcan]

Ya, was thinking after I submitted that SELECT and DELETE are always going to be the longest anyway, so it always works for SQL!