Unable to make delta use pager always

[osa1]

Thank you for delta, it's great. I've been trying to make it use pager always when invoked via git. I currently have --paging=always everwhere in my .gitconfig where I use delta, but when the diff is small delta still doesn't use paging. Relevant parts of my gitconfig:

[core]
    excludesfile = /home/omer/.gitignore_global
    pager = delta --paging=always
[interactive]
    diffFilter = delta --color-only --paging=always
    side-by-side = true
    features = unobstrusive-line-numbers decorations
[delta]
    line-numbers = true

Anyone know what the problem could be? Where do I start debugging this? Thanks!

[dandavison]

Hey @osa1, thanks!

I think that you can get what you want by doing something like export DELTA_PAGER='less -R'.

I am not certain that everything is absolutely perfect regarding the precedence of the various arguments and env vars involved. For example, I personally thought that the following would page, but it did not:

echo hello | LESS= DELTA_PAGER= PAGER= delta --paging=always

So, there might be some improvements to make to delta! But I think if you are prepared to set that env var then you can get the behaviour you want now.

[osa1]

That command works! Because I have DELTA_PAGER in env, and core.pager stuff in my .gitconfig, just this much enough to fix this for me: LESS= git diff.

Is this expected? Or a bug in delta?

[dandavison]

OK, great! So what is the value of LESS you have in the environment, before doing LESS=?

[osa1]

I don't have LESS in my env. My full env is shown above.

[dandavison]

Right, sorry, yes that does seem undesirable then that setting it to empty string, as opposed to unset, has this rather mysterious consequence! I do think that things could be a bit better here, but it is a bit of a headache doing what users will want under all the different permutations of the env vars and less settings and delta options.

[osa1]

Fair enough. Adding export LESS= to my .zshrc is good enough for me. Thanks again!