Re: when is "git diff" output suitable for patch?

From: Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net>
Date: Jul 13, 2006, 21:27 UTC
Message-ID: <7vhd1lurei.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>
In-Reply-To: <20060713212127.GA30770@fieldses.org>

"J. Bruce Fields" <bfields@fieldses.org> writes:

> I assume the -C and -M, -c, and -cc options all result in diff output
> that can't be correctly applied by "patch" any more?  (Would a patch to
> the git-diff-files documentation warning about this be helpful?)

May not be bad to have, except that I do not know if "git-diff-files" documentation is the right place to talk about it.

> Someone I'm working with is having trouble applying patches that they
> created with a simple "git diff".  The patches in question have some
> "copy from/copy to" headers.  Should that every happen with just a plain
> "git diff"?  Is this a bug in their version of git?  (They're on 1.2.4).

As far as I recall "git diff" never defaulted to -M. These days you can have diff.renames = true in the configuration to make it so, but and I do not think there was any way to do that back in 1.2.4.

If _they_ created the diff with git, and if that is the same _they_ who are having trouble applying, maybe you can suggest to use "git apply" instead of "patch -p1"?