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 · Accepted 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

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

[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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