[aptwebapps]

"It's sometimes astonishing how the pursuit of optimal diffs masks the intent of a change where an added method diff starts with the closing brace of the previous method, for example."

In Python you can get the whole return statement. Especially when adding a similar type of method, e.g.: Django view functions. Makes

    git add -p

more fun.

[mpyne]

I've found that experimenting with the various git diff algorithms helps out. IIRC there is an "-x patience" flag you can pass to git-diff and tools which use that, which spends more time to get "better" diffs.