How do I apply a diff patch on Windows

Question

There are plenty of programs out there that can create a diff patch  but I m having a heck of a time trying to apply one  I m trying to distribute a patch  and I got a question from a user about how to apply it  So I tried to figure it out on my own and found out that I have no clue  and most of the tools I can find are command-line   I can handle a command line  but a lot of people would be lost without a nice  friendly GUI  So those are no good for this purpose    I tried using TortoiseSVN  I have the patch I d like to apply  I right-click on the patch  and there s an option under the TortoiseSVN submenu that says  Apply patch   All it does is pull up an empty window   So I tried hitting Open  It has two options  merge and apply unified diff   The patch is in unified diff format  luckily   But the apply option just plain doesn t work  It asks for the patch and a folder  Somehow it forgot to ask for the file to apply the patch to  So TortoiseSVN just plain doesn t work  Is there a Windows GUI-based utility that will take a patch and a file and apply it properly   EDIT  Looking at the replies so far  it seems that Tortoise will only do it right if it s a file that s already versioned  That s not the case here  I need to be able to apply a patch to a file that did not come out of an SVN repository  I just tried using Tortoise  because I happen to know that SVN uses diffs and has to know how to both create them and apply them

User · Answer

I made pure Python tool just for that  It has predictable cross-platform behavior  Although it doesn t create new files  at the time of writing this  and lacks a GUI  it can be used as a library to create graphic tool   UPDATE  It should be more convenient to use it if you have Python installed   pip install patch python -m patch

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If you are using Mercurial  this is done via  import   So at the command line  the hg import command  or  you may find the --no-commit option useful   or  Repository      Import     in Hg Workbench   Note that these will commit the changes by default  you can avoid this using  hg import --no-commit option if using the command-line  or if you used Hg Workbench  you might find it useful to issue hg rollback after the merge

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Using git Diff or linux patch to apply a patch on windows using git diff Patches created anywhere on linux  MacOS or else  using the GNU patch command or git diff can be all applied on windows using git apply  Create the patch For instance to create the patch from 2 directories in which 1 or more files have been changed  diff -Naru original dir modified dir  gt  0001-path-file patch   quot -N quot  treat absent files as empty  necessary to only consider modified content  quot -a quot  treat all files as text  not compulsory  needs removed if dealing - with binary patches   quot -r quot  recursive for directories traversal  quot -u quot  adds 3 lines of context by default around all diffs  OR using git diff git diff original dir modified dir  gt  0001-path-file patch Then copy the  patch file on the windows environment as well as the original dir directory that contains the original unchanged files  Apply with git diff   Pre-requisite  Install git  i e  from https   git-scm com downloads  1 Copy the patch file in the parent directory 2 cd into the original directory 3 Apply the patch using git apply copy 0001-path-file patch    original dir  cd original dir git apply  lt  0001-path-file patch

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The patch exe utility from the Git installation works on Windows 10   Install Git for Windows then use the  C  Program Files Git usr bin patch exe  command to apply a patch    If any error message like a Hunk  1 FAILED at 1  different line endings   had been got on the output during applying a patch  try to add the -l  that is a shortcut for the --ignore-whitespace  or the --binary switches to the command line

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EDIT  Looking at the replies so far  it seems that Tortoise will only do it right if it s a file that s already versioned  That s not the case here  I need to be able to apply a patch to a file that did not come out of an SVN repository  I just tried using Tortoise because I happen to know that SVN uses diffs and has to know how to both create them and apply them    You can install Cygwin  then use the command-line patch tool to apply the patch  See also this Unix man page  which applies to patch

User · Answer

Do you have two monitors  I was having the same issue with TortoiseMerge and I realized that when I disabled one of the monitors the little window with the file list showed up  Hope this helps you

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For Java projects  I have used NetBeans to apply patch files  If the Java code you are patching is not already a NetBeans project  create a project for it  To create a new project    Select menu File -  New Project In the resulting dialog  make it a Java Application project  Give it a name in the dialog  and click Finish  Right-click the name of your project  and select Properties from the context menu In the resulting dialog  select Sources  and add a Source Folder  Browse to your Java source    Now that you have a project  apply the patch    Highlight your project to select it From the main menu  select menu Tools -  Apply Diff Patch In the resulting dialog  browse to your patch file  select it  and press the Patch button    That s it  Your patch should be applied  and you should see a diff window showing the changes

User · Answer

I use MSYS2 from http   www msys2 org   It provides many utilities like patch  which  git  tree  and many more   After installing MSYS2 simply run the package manager to install patch   pacman -S patch

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You can use this Win32 native port of the patch utility   It comes along with a bigger selection of other utilities and in contrast to Cygwin and similar it does not need any DLLs or similar  Just pick your tiny executable of choice and store it wherever you want   Simple usage     patch exe -i  lt patchfile gt    Get more help   patch exe --help

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Eclipse should be able to do it  go to TeamSynchronize perspective and then into Project- Apply patch

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Apply Patch  With TortoiseMerge    Find and open an existing SVN repo directory Create a new directory named  merges   if it does not exist already Copy the file onto which you want to apply the  patch file ADD and COMMIT to the svn repository before you continue to the next step Right click on merges and choose Apply patch    Double click the file from list The patched file with diff is displayed on the right pane Click on that pane and hit Save or export with File- Save As      Alternative screeny if you Open from TortoiseMerge   In the screeny below  directory refers to the  merges  directory mentioned at step 2 above    Screenshot of WinMerge GUI

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A BusyBox port for Windows has both a diff and patch command  but they only support unified format

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When applying patches using TortoiseSVN  I typically save the path in the root of the checked out repository   You should then be able to right click on the patch  go to the TortoiseSVN menu  and click ApplyPatch   ApplyPatch should automatically figure out which level in the directory hierarchy the patch was created   I have  however  had issues in the past with applying patches that contain new files  or which involve renames to files   Whatever algorithm Tortoise uses for this doesn t seem to handle those scenarios very well   Unicode can give you similar issues

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The patch tells it what file to apply to  The header should be something like  view it in Notepad or your fav text editor    --- Folder old file     Folder new file   In the case of a Subversion patch  you d have revision numbers as well  since the file names are the same    GNU patch will let you override those names  but I don t know of any GUI tools to do the same  I d check with the various diff programs - though  it does not appear WinMerge supports applying patches

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If you are getting  Not a working copy  error message then try selecting a directory from TortoiseMerge dialog box which is a working directory of SVN

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It appears that TortoiseSVN  TortoiseMerge  requires the line Index  foobar py in the diff patch file  This is what I needed to do to make a non-TortoiseSVN patch file work with TortoiseSVN s right-click Apply Patch command   Before   --- foobar py org   Sat May 08 16 00 56 2010     foobar py   Sat May 08 15 47 48 2010   After   Index  foobar py                                                                     --- foobar py     foobar py    working copy    Or if you know the specific revision your contributor was working from   Index  foobar py                                                                     --- foobar py    revision 1157      foobar py    working copy

User · Answer

TortoiseMerge is a separate utility that comes bundled with TortoiseSVN   It can also be can be downloaded separately in the TortoiseDiff zip archive  This will allow you to apply unified diffs to non-versioned files

User · Answer

I am already using BeyondCompare  commercial  for diffs and merges  and this tool also has the capability to create  view and apply patches

User · Answer

I know you said you would prefer a GUI  but the commandline tools will do the work nicely  See GnuWin for a port of unix tools to Windows  You d need the patch command  obviously  -   You might run into a problem with the line termination  though  The GnuWin port will assume that the patchfile has DOS style line termination  CR LF   Try to open the patchfile in a reasonably smart editor and it will convert it for you

User · Answer

In TortoiseSVN  patch applying does work  You need to apply the patch to the same directory as it was created from  It is always important to keep this in mind  So here s how you do it in TortoiseSVN   Right click on the folder you want to apply the patch to  It will present a dialog asking for the location of the patch file  Select the file and this should open up a little file list window that lists the changed files  and clicking each item should open a diff window that shows what the patch is about to do to that file   Good luck

User · Answer

Just use   patch -p0  lt  path-file patch   remember execute this command only from the folder location where you created the patch

[windows] How do I apply a diff patch on Windows?

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