Documentation / git-apply.txton commit Merge branch 'maint-1.5.6' into maint-1.6.0 (a1eb73d)
   1git-apply(1)
   2============
   3
   4NAME
   5----
   6git-apply - Apply a patch on a git index file and a working tree
   7
   8
   9SYNOPSIS
  10--------
  11[verse]
  12'git apply' [--stat] [--numstat] [--summary] [--check] [--index]
  13          [--apply] [--no-add] [--build-fake-ancestor <file>] [-R | --reverse]
  14          [--allow-binary-replacement | --binary] [--reject] [-z]
  15          [-pNUM] [-CNUM] [--inaccurate-eof] [--recount] [--cached]
  16          [--whitespace=<nowarn|warn|fix|error|error-all>]
  17          [--exclude=PATH] [--directory=<root>] [--verbose] [<patch>...]
  18
  19DESCRIPTION
  20-----------
  21Reads supplied 'diff' output and applies it on a git index file
  22and a work tree.
  23
  24OPTIONS
  25-------
  26<patch>...::
  27        The files to read patch from.  '-' can be used to read
  28        from the standard input.
  29
  30--stat::
  31        Instead of applying the patch, output diffstat for the
  32        input.  Turns off "apply".
  33
  34--numstat::
  35        Similar to \--stat, but shows number of added and
  36        deleted lines in decimal notation and pathname without
  37        abbreviation, to make it more machine friendly.  For
  38        binary files, outputs two `-` instead of saying
  39        `0 0`.  Turns off "apply".
  40
  41--summary::
  42        Instead of applying the patch, output a condensed
  43        summary of information obtained from git diff extended
  44        headers, such as creations, renames and mode changes.
  45        Turns off "apply".
  46
  47--check::
  48        Instead of applying the patch, see if the patch is
  49        applicable to the current work tree and/or the index
  50        file and detects errors.  Turns off "apply".
  51
  52--index::
  53        When --check is in effect, or when applying the patch
  54        (which is the default when none of the options that
  55        disables it is in effect), make sure the patch is
  56        applicable to what the current index file records.  If
  57        the file to be patched in the work tree is not
  58        up-to-date, it is flagged as an error.  This flag also
  59        causes the index file to be updated.
  60
  61--cached::
  62        Apply a patch without touching the working tree. Instead, take the
  63        cached data, apply the patch, and store the result in the index,
  64        without using the working tree. This implies '--index'.
  65
  66--build-fake-ancestor <file>::
  67        Newer 'git-diff' output has embedded 'index information'
  68        for each blob to help identify the original version that
  69        the patch applies to.  When this flag is given, and if
  70        the original versions of the blobs is available locally,
  71        builds a temporary index containing those blobs.
  72+
  73When a pure mode change is encountered (which has no index information),
  74the information is read from the current index instead.
  75
  76-R::
  77--reverse::
  78        Apply the patch in reverse.
  79
  80--reject::
  81        For atomicity, 'git-apply' by default fails the whole patch and
  82        does not touch the working tree when some of the hunks
  83        do not apply.  This option makes it apply
  84        the parts of the patch that are applicable, and leave the
  85        rejected hunks in corresponding *.rej files.
  86
  87-z::
  88        When showing the index information, do not munge paths,
  89        but use NUL terminated machine readable format.  Without
  90        this flag, the pathnames output will have TAB, LF, and
  91        backslash characters replaced with `\t`, `\n`, and `\\`,
  92        respectively.
  93
  94-p<n>::
  95        Remove <n> leading slashes from traditional diff paths. The
  96        default is 1.
  97
  98-C<n>::
  99        Ensure at least <n> lines of surrounding context match before
 100        and after each change.  When fewer lines of surrounding
 101        context exist they all must match.  By default no context is
 102        ever ignored.
 103
 104--unidiff-zero::
 105        By default, 'git-apply' expects that the patch being
 106        applied is a unified diff with at least one line of context.
 107        This provides good safety measures, but breaks down when
 108        applying a diff generated with --unified=0. To bypass these
 109        checks use '--unidiff-zero'.
 110+
 111Note, for the reasons stated above usage of context-free patches are
 112discouraged.
 113
 114--apply::
 115        If you use any of the options marked "Turns off
 116        'apply'" above, 'git-apply' reads and outputs the
 117        information you asked without actually applying the
 118        patch.  Give this flag after those flags to also apply
 119        the patch.
 120
 121--no-add::
 122        When applying a patch, ignore additions made by the
 123        patch.  This can be used to extract the common part between
 124        two files by first running 'diff' on them and applying
 125        the result with this option, which would apply the
 126        deletion part but not addition part.
 127
 128--allow-binary-replacement::
 129--binary::
 130        Historically we did not allow binary patch applied
 131        without an explicit permission from the user, and this
 132        flag was the way to do so.  Currently we always allow binary
 133        patch application, so this is a no-op.
 134
 135--exclude=<path-pattern>::
 136        Don't apply changes to files matching the given path pattern. This can
 137        be useful when importing patchsets, where you want to exclude certain
 138        files or directories.
 139
 140--whitespace=<action>::
 141        When applying a patch, detect a new or modified line that has
 142        whitespace errors.  What are considered whitespace errors is
 143        controlled by `core.whitespace` configuration.  By default,
 144        trailing whitespaces (including lines that solely consist of
 145        whitespaces) and a space character that is immediately followed
 146        by a tab character inside the initial indent of the line are
 147        considered whitespace errors.
 148+
 149By default, the command outputs warning messages but applies the patch.
 150When `git-apply` is used for statistics and not applying a
 151patch, it defaults to `nowarn`.
 152+
 153You can use different `<action>` to control this
 154behavior:
 155+
 156* `nowarn` turns off the trailing whitespace warning.
 157* `warn` outputs warnings for a few such errors, but applies the
 158  patch as-is (default).
 159* `fix` outputs warnings for a few such errors, and applies the
 160  patch after fixing them (`strip` is a synonym --- the tool
 161  used to consider only trailing whitespaces as errors, and the
 162  fix involved 'stripping' them, but modern gits do more).
 163* `error` outputs warnings for a few such errors, and refuses
 164  to apply the patch.
 165* `error-all` is similar to `error` but shows all errors.
 166
 167--inaccurate-eof::
 168        Under certain circumstances, some versions of 'diff' do not correctly
 169        detect a missing new-line at the end of the file. As a result, patches
 170        created by such 'diff' programs do not record incomplete lines
 171        correctly. This option adds support for applying such patches by
 172        working around this bug.
 173
 174-v::
 175--verbose::
 176        Report progress to stderr. By default, only a message about the
 177        current patch being applied will be printed. This option will cause
 178        additional information to be reported.
 179
 180--recount::
 181        Do not trust the line counts in the hunk headers, but infer them
 182        by inspecting the patch (e.g. after editing the patch without
 183        adjusting the hunk headers appropriately).
 184
 185--directory=<root>::
 186        Prepend <root> to all filenames.  If a "-p" argument was passed, too,
 187        it is applied before prepending the new root.
 188+
 189For example, a patch that talks about updating `a/git-gui.sh` to `b/git-gui.sh`
 190can be applied to the file in the working tree `modules/git-gui/git-gui.sh` by
 191running `git apply --directory=modules/git-gui`.
 192
 193Configuration
 194-------------
 195
 196apply.whitespace::
 197        When no `--whitespace` flag is given from the command
 198        line, this configuration item is used as the default.
 199
 200Submodules
 201----------
 202If the patch contains any changes to submodules then 'git-apply'
 203treats these changes as follows.
 204
 205If --index is specified (explicitly or implicitly), then the submodule
 206commits must match the index exactly for the patch to apply.  If any
 207of the submodules are checked-out, then these check-outs are completely
 208ignored, i.e., they are not required to be up-to-date or clean and they
 209are not updated.
 210
 211If --index is not specified, then the submodule commits in the patch
 212are ignored and only the absence of presence of the corresponding
 213subdirectory is checked and (if possible) updated.
 214
 215Author
 216------
 217Written by Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
 218
 219Documentation
 220--------------
 221Documentation by Junio C Hamano
 222
 223GIT
 224---
 225Part of the linkgit:git[1] suite