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

NAME

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

SYNOPSIS

git apply [--stat] [--numstat] [--summary] [--check]
[--index | --intent-to-add] [--3way] [--ours | --theirs | --union]
[--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

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

<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.

--ours, --theirs, --union
Instead of leaving conflicts in the file, resolve conflicts
favouring our (or their or both) side of the lines. Requires
--3way.

--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:

+o nowarn turns off the trailing whitespace warning.

+o warn outputs warnings for a few such errors, but applies the
patch as-is (default).

+o 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).

+o error outputs warnings for a few such errors, and refuses to
apply the patch.

+o 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

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

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

git-am(1).

GIT

Part of the git(1) suite

Git 2.48.1 2025-01-13 GIT-APPLY(1)