git-apply(1) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | CONFIGURATION | SUBMODULES | SEE ALSO | GIT | COLOPHON

GIT-APPLY(1)                   Git Manual                   GIT-APPLY(1)

NAME         top

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

SYNOPSIS         top

       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         top

       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         top

       <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, the 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 application
           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 an error for patches containing no diff. This
           includes empty patches and patches with commit text only.

CONFIGURATION         top

       Everything below this line in this section is selectively
       included from the git-config(1) documentation. The content is the
       same as what’s found there:

       apply.ignoreWhitespace
           When set to change, tells git apply to ignore changes in
           whitespace, in the same way as the --ignore-space-change
           option. When set to one of: no, none, never, false, it tells
           git apply to respect all whitespace differences. See
           git-apply(1).

       apply.whitespace
           Tells git apply how to handle whitespace, in the same way as
           the --whitespace option. See git-apply(1).

SUBMODULES         top

       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.

SEE ALSO         top

       git-am(1).

GIT         top

       Part of the git(1) suite

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the git (Git distributed version control
       system) project.  Information about the project can be found at
       ⟨http://git-scm.com/⟩.  If you have a bug report for this manual
       page, see ⟨http://git-scm.com/community⟩.  This page was obtained
       from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://github.com/git/git.git⟩ on 2023-12-22.  (At that time,
       the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
       repository was 2023-12-20.)  If you discover any rendering
       problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there
       is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
       corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       man-pages@man7.org

Git 2.43.0.174.g055bb6         2023-12-20                   GIT-APPLY(1)

Pages that refer to this page: git(1)git-am(1)git-apply(1)git-config(1)git-diff(1)git-range-diff(1)git-rebase(1)git-stripspace(1)