Re: Why doesn't git-apply remove empty file

From: René Scharfe <rene.scharfe@lsrfire.ath.cx>
Date: Aug 13, 2008, 21:52 UTC
Message-ID: <48A357BA.8060003@lsrfire.ath.cx>
In-Reply-To: <38b2ab8a0808130048t506dbb7ah1d6fcd6bd4f3c90c@mail.gmail.com>

Francis Moreau schrieb:

Show 22 quoted lines

>     $ mkdir a b
>     $ date > a/f
>     $ diff -Nurp a/f b/f
>     --- a/f 2008-08-13 09:27:29.000000000 +0200
>     +++ b/f 1970-01-01 01:00:00.000000000 +0100
>     @@ -1 +0,0 @@
>     -Wed Aug 13 09:27:29 CEST 2008
> 
> So '/dev/null' doesn't appear here. I think patch(1) uses the date of
> b/f for removing
> the file.
> 
> If we keep going on:
> 
>     $ diff -Nurp a b > test.patch
>     $ ( cd a && git apply ../test.patch )
>     $ ls a
>     f
>     $ cat a/f
>     $
> 
> of course patch(1) does remove the file.

I bet you are using GNU patch. It removes files that are empty after patching and you need to specify --posix to make it keep empty files.

Larry Wall's original version of patch keeps empty files by default and you need to use the option option -E (or --remove-empty-files) to make it remove them.

René