git-apply fails on creating a new file, with both -p and --directory specified

Hi all,

the subject of this mail may read familiar to some - there was a discussion in November last year (see http://kerneltrap.org/mailarchive/git/2009/11/23/16899/) concerning this problem.

Today I had this same issue with git 1.7.0.4. Reading the above mentioned discussion and seaching the net did not help me in finding a solution to the problem.

I have to apply patches from one repository to another repository, which have a different layout (I am working on splitting one big repository into several smaller ones, while development still continues on the big repository).

So I did

big-repo$ git format-patche -o /tmp/foo small-repo$ git apply -p2 --directory=some/path --check /tmp/foo/*

and get

fatal: git diff header lacks filename information when removing 2 leading pathname components (line 37)

the patch looks like this:

35| diff --git a/xyz/bar.jpg b/xyz/bar.jpg 36| new file mode 100644 37| index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..3dcce2e1f68586ed2089d86b1bf4e7e41c818d97 38| GIT binary patch 39| literal 8791

Since this problem was discussed before - is there a solution? This is something like a showstopper for me right now, so I am very thankful for any hints.

Best regards,

Mat