How do you take a git diff file and apply it to a local branch that is a copy of the same repository

Question

I have a  diff file created by a coworker  and would like to apply the changes listed in that diff file to my local branch of the exact same repository   I do not have access to that worker s pc or branch that was used to generate this diff file   Obviously I could go line by line and retype everything  but i d rather not subject the system to human error  What s the easiest way to do this

User · Answer

It seems like you can also use the patch command. Put the diff in the root of the repository and run patch from the command line.

patch -i yourcoworkers.diff

or

patch -p0 -i yourcoworkers.diff

You may need to remove the leading folder structure if they created the diff without using --no-prefix.

If so, then you can remove the parts of the folder that don't apply using:

patch -p1 -i yourcoworkers.diff

The -p(n) signifies how many parts of the folder structure to remove.

More information on creating and applying patches here.

You can also use

git apply yourcoworkers.diff --stat

to see if the diff by default will apply any changes. It may say 0 files affected if the patch is not applied correctly (different folder structure).

User · Answer

Copy the diff file to the root of your repository  and then do   git apply yourcoworkers diff   More information about the apply command is available on its man page   By the way  A better way to exchange whole commits by file is the combination of the commands git format-patch on the sender and then git am on the receiver  because it also transfers the authorship info and the commit message   If the patch application fails and if the commits the diff was generated from are actually in your repo  you can use the -3 option of apply that tries to merge in the changes   It also works with Unix pipe as follows   git diff d892531 815a3b5   git apply

[git] How do you take a git diff file, and apply it to a local branch that is a copy of the same repository?

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