My use-case would somewhat be handled by separating code and xml differences, but I would like to be able to filter on difference count (or at least, easily see / sort by diff count).

For example: We are updating the API version on all of our classes and triggers (about 279 files this go around) and I want to make sure that the API update is the only diff when doing a deployment. Or to be worded differently: only deploy files where the only difference is the API version.