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How to generate and apply patches with git? — First published in fullweb.io issue #33

How to generate and apply patches with git?

It sometimes happen you need change code on a machine from which you cannot push to the repo. You’re ready to copy/paste what diff outputs to your local working copy.

You think there must be a better way to proceed and you’re right. It’s a simple 2 steps process:

1. Generate the patch:

git diff > some-changes.patch

2. Apply the diff:

Then copy this patch to your local machine, and apply it to your local working copy with:

git apply /path/to/some-changes.patch

And that’s it! The changes are now in your working copy and ready to be staged/commit/pushed :)

@ahwelp
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ahwelp commented Apr 5, 2020

If you want to get the diff from a remote place without storing the file:

curl https://example.com/file-0.0.1.diff | git apply 

@johncmunson
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Does this work when your patch spans multiple files, new files, deleted files, directories, etc?

@shad
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shad commented Apr 22, 2020

Yes.

@wenijinew
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wenijinew commented Oct 24, 2020

Hi,

Did you ever face and solve the problem as follows?

git diff c5d633f7 relativepath/to/file > ~/p.patch
git apply --check ~/p.patch
error: patch failed: relativepath/to/file:1
error: relativepath/to/file: patch does not apply

@ievgen-pavlenko
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ievgen-pavlenko commented Nov 16, 2020

Try to use verbose mode git apply --verbose ~/p.patch
it will show more detailed info

To solve my problem I added --ignore-whitespace flag

@guettli
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guettli commented May 27, 2021

I get:

git apply ~/tmp/cherry-pick.patch
error: foo/client.py: No such file or directory
error: stand/foo/test_client.py: No such file or directory

But this works:

patch -p0 < ~/tmp/cherry-pick.patch 

@simanga-dev
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Hello. I have a patch diff in .diff format, git give me errors when I apply it and I want to manual solve the errors.
How can I view what the patch is trying to do and my local state of the project in diff mod so that I can fix the changes manual

@vijayhardaha
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@h3ndry you can open your patch file in any text editor and can see changes and file informations.

@coccoinomane
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Thanks for the snippets!
To make then work with changes to binary files, I had to run git diff --binary > some-changes.patch.

@iamshouvikmitra
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If you have a commit id, then you can also use

git show bc6626756 > ./my-changes.patch

and to restore use

git apply ./my-changes.patch

@rmmgc
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rmmgc commented Feb 16, 2023

git diff will always add file path to the patch like this.

diff --git a/<file_path> b/<file_path>
...

If you want to reuse the same patch on the file that does not match this file_path, you can do it with patch command.

patch <file_to_patch> <file_with_patch>

@MayuriVidekar
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I created patch file for stash using following command:
git stash show "stash@{0}" -p > '..\stashes\changes.patch'

When I try to apply the same using
git apply '..\stashes\changes.patch'

Got below error:
error: No valid patches in input (allow with "--allow-empty")

Path to the patch file is correct. Can someone please help?

@ssi-anik
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ssi-anik commented May 23, 2023

If you run git diff it will show changes that were tracked previously. But newly added files are not shown in the diff. To create a patch, I did the following.

  • git add -A # Add everything to the staging area.
  • git diff --staged --patch > changes.patch # --staged shows all the changes including new files
  • git reset # Reset to the old state

Now, I can apply the changes.


Edit: I just checked git diff --staged --patch and git diff --staged by creating two new patch files, and comparing them with the diff command. I don't find any difference.

@BobToninho
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@ssi-anik Didn't think about untracked files—I always forget about them when thinking about git command, thanks!

I believe you can simplify your solution even more by using intent-to-add like this:

git add --intent-to-add --all
# or
git add -NA

@mrpointzby
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mrpointzby commented May 10, 2024

I can export the code change to .patch file, but the change only include the main part, Now I change the submodule and want to export the code change in submodule to the same .patch file so that I can apply the patch file for all code changes on new project including the submodule part, are there some commands to do this?

@rajavelraj
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Hi

@rajavelraj
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Git format-patch- 1- head

@JulienCochuyt
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@MayuriVidekar, same error here on Windows. I'm pretty sure it used to work. Resorting now to git checkout -p the stash rev.

@KoltesDigital
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@MayuriVidekar @JulienCochuyt surely you're using PowerShell < 7.4. Upgrade or see https://stackoverflow.com/a/70283963/14098985 for workarounds.

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