Ubuntu Manpage: git-apply - Apply a patch to files and/or to the index

Provided by: git-man_2.37.2-1ubuntu1_all

NAME

       git-apply - Apply a patch to files and/or to the index

SYNOPSIS

       git apply [--stat] [--numstat] [--summary] [--check] [--index | --intent-to-add] [--3way]
                 [--apply] [--no-add] [--build-fake-ancestor=<file>] [-R | --reverse]
                 [--allow-binary-replacement | --binary] [--reject] [-z]
                 [-p<n>] [-C<n>] [--inaccurate-eof] [--recount] [--cached]
                 [--ignore-space-change | --ignore-whitespace]
                 [--whitespace=(nowarn|warn|fix|error|error-all)]
                 [--exclude=<path>] [--include=<path>] [--directory=<root>]
                 [--verbose | --quiet] [--unsafe-paths] [--allow-empty] [<patch>...]

DESCRIPTION

       Reads the supplied diff output (i.e. "a patch") and applies it to files. When running from
       a subdirectory in a repository, patched paths outside the directory are ignored. With the
       --index option the patch is also applied to the index, and with the --cached option the
       patch is only applied to the index. Without these options, the command applies the patch
       only to files, and does not require them to be in a Git repository.

       This command applies the patch but does not create a commit. Use git-am(1) to create
       commits from patches generated by git-format-patch(1) and/or received by email.

OPTIONS

<patch>...
The files to read the patch from. - can be used to read from the standard input.

--stat
Instead of applying the patch, output diffstat for the input. Turns off "apply".

--numstat
Similar to --stat, but shows the number of added and deleted lines in decimal notation
and the pathname without abbreviation, to make it more machine friendly. For binary
files, outputs two - instead of saying 0 0. Turns off "apply".

--summary
Instead of applying the patch, output a condensed summary of information obtained from
git diff extended headers, such as creations, renames and mode changes. Turns off
"apply".

--check
Instead of applying the patch, see if the patch is applicable to the current working
tree and/or the index file and detects errors. Turns off "apply".

--index
Apply the patch to both the index and the working tree (or merely check that it would
apply cleanly to both if --check is in effect). Note that --index expects index
entries and working tree copies for relevant paths to be identical (their contents and
metadata such as file mode must match), and will raise an error if they are not, even
if the patch would apply cleanly to both the index and the working tree in isolation.

--cached
Apply the patch to just the index, without touching the working tree. If --check is in
effect, merely check that it would apply cleanly to the index entry.

--intent-to-add
When applying the patch only to the working tree, mark new files to be added to the
index later (see --intent-to-add option in git-add(1)). This option is ignored unless
running in a Git repository and --index is not specified. Note that --index could be
implied by other options such as --cached or --3way.

-3, --3way
Attempt 3-way merge if the patch records the identity of blobs it is supposed to apply
to and we have those blobs available locally, possibly leaving the conflict markers in
the files in the working tree for the user to resolve. This option implies the --index
option unless the --cached option is used, and is incompatible with the --reject
option. When used with the --cached option, any conflicts are left at higher stages in
the cache.

--build-fake-ancestor=<file>
Newer git diff output has embedded index information for each blob to help identify
the original version that the patch applies to. When this flag is given, and if the
original versions of the blobs are available locally, builds a temporary index
containing those blobs.

When a pure mode change is encountered (which has no index information), the
information is read from the current index instead.

-R, --reverse
Apply the patch in reverse.

--reject
For atomicity, git apply by default fails the whole patch and does not touch the
working tree when some of the hunks do not apply. This option makes it apply the parts
of the patch that are applicable, and leave the rejected hunks in corresponding *.rej
files.

-z
When --numstat has been given, do not munge pathnames, but use a NUL-terminated
machine-readable format.

Without this option, pathnames with "unusual" characters are quoted as explained for
the configuration variable core.quotePath (see git-config(1)).

-p<n>
Remove <n> leading path components (separated by slashes) from traditional diff paths.
E.g., with -p2, a patch against a/dir/file will be applied directly to file. The
default is 1.

-C<n>
Ensure at least <n> lines of surrounding context match before and after each change.
When fewer lines of surrounding context exist they all must match. By default no
context is ever ignored.

--unidiff-zero
By default, git apply expects that the patch being applied is a unified diff with at
least one line of context. This provides good safety measures, but breaks down when
applying a diff generated with --unified=0. To bypass these checks use --unidiff-zero.

Note, for the reasons stated above usage of context-free patches is discouraged.

--apply
If you use any of the options marked "Turns off apply" above, git apply reads and
outputs the requested information without actually applying the patch. Give this flag
after those flags to also apply the patch.

--no-add
When applying a patch, ignore additions made by the patch. This can be used to extract
the common part between two files by first running diff on them and applying the
result with this option, which would apply the deletion part but not the addition
part.

--allow-binary-replacement, --binary
Historically we did not allow binary patch applied without an explicit permission from
the user, and this flag was the way to do so. Currently we always allow binary patch
application, so this is a no-op.

--exclude=<path-pattern>
Don’t apply changes to files matching the given path pattern. This can be useful when
importing patchsets, where you want to exclude certain files or directories.

--include=<path-pattern>
Apply changes to files matching the given path pattern. This can be useful when
importing patchsets, where you want to include certain files or directories.

When --exclude and --include patterns are used, they are examined in the order they
appear on the command line, and the first match determines if a patch to each path is
used. A patch to a path that does not match any include/exclude pattern is used by
default if there is no include pattern on the command line, and ignored if there is
any include pattern.

--ignore-space-change, --ignore-whitespace
When applying a patch, ignore changes in whitespace in context lines if necessary.
Context lines will preserve their whitespace, and they will not undergo whitespace
fixing regardless of the value of the --whitespace option. New lines will still be
fixed, though.

--whitespace=<action>
When applying a patch, detect a new or modified line that has whitespace errors. What
are considered whitespace errors is controlled by core.whitespace configuration. By
default, trailing whitespaces (including lines that solely consist of whitespaces) and
a space character that is immediately followed by a tab character inside the initial
indent of the line are considered whitespace errors.

By default, the command outputs warning messages but applies the patch. When git-apply
is used for statistics and not applying a patch, it defaults to nowarn.

You can use different <action> values to control this behavior:

• nowarn turns off the trailing whitespace warning.

• warn outputs warnings for a few such errors, but applies the patch as-is
(default).

• fix outputs warnings for a few such errors, and applies the patch after fixing
them (strip is a synonym --- the tool used to consider only trailing whitespace
characters as errors, and the fix involved stripping them, but modern Gits do
more).

• error outputs warnings for a few such errors, and refuses to apply the patch.

• error-all is similar to error but shows all errors.

--inaccurate-eof
Under certain circumstances, some versions of diff do not correctly detect a missing
new-line at the end of the file. As a result, patches created by such diff programs do
not record incomplete lines correctly. This option adds support for applying such
patches by working around this bug.

-v, --verbose
Report progress to stderr. By default, only a message about the current patch being
applied will be printed. This option will cause additional information to be reported.

-q, --quiet
Suppress stderr output. Messages about patch status and progress will not be printed.

--recount
Do not trust the line counts in the hunk headers, but infer them by inspecting the
patch (e.g. after editing the patch without adjusting the hunk headers appropriately).

--directory=<root>
Prepend <root> to all filenames. If a "-p" argument was also passed, it is applied
before prepending the new root.

For example, a patch that talks about updating a/git-gui.sh to b/git-gui.sh can be
applied to the file in the working tree modules/git-gui/git-gui.sh by running git
apply --directory=modules/git-gui.

--unsafe-paths
By default, a patch that affects outside the working area (either a Git controlled
working tree, or the current working directory when "git apply" is used as a
replacement of GNU patch) is rejected as a mistake (or a mischief).

When git apply is used as a "better GNU patch", the user can pass the --unsafe-paths
option to override this safety check. This option has no effect when --index or
--cached is in use.

--allow-empty
Don’t return error for patches containing no diff. This includes empty patches and
patches with commit text only.

CONFIGURATION

       apply.ignoreWhitespace
           Set to change if you want changes in whitespace to be ignored by default. Set to one
           of: no, none, never, false if you want changes in whitespace to be significant.

       apply.whitespace
           When no --whitespace flag is given from the command line, this configuration item is
           used as the default.

SUBMODULES

       If the patch contains any changes to submodules then git apply treats these changes as
       follows.

       If --index is specified (explicitly or implicitly), then the submodule commits must match
       the index exactly for the patch to apply. If any of the submodules are checked-out, then
       these check-outs are completely ignored, i.e., they are not required to be up to date or
       clean and they are not updated.

       If --index is not specified, then the submodule commits in the patch are ignored and only
       the absence or presence of the corresponding subdirectory is checked and (if possible)
       updated.

GIT

       Part of the git(1) suite