Re: being nice to patch(1)

From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Date: Jul 2, 2007, 21:16 UTC
Message-ID: <alpine.LFD.0.98.0707021409510.9434@woody.linux-foundation.org>
In-Reply-To: <20070702125450.28228edd.akpm@linux-foundation.org>

On Mon, 2 Jul 2007, Andrew Morton wrote:

Show 18 quoted lines

> 
> James's current git-scsi-misc has this commit in it:
> 
> commit a16efc1cbf0a9e5ea9f99ae98fb774b60d05c35b
> Author: Kars de Jong <jongk@linux-m68k.org>
> Date:   Sun Jun 17 14:47:08 2007 +0200
> 
> [SCSI] 53c700: Amiga 4000T NCR53c710 SCSI
>     
>     New driver for the Amiga 4000T built-in NCR53c710 SCSI controller, using the
>     53c700 SCSI core.
>     
>     Signed-off-by: Geert Uytterhoeven <geert@linux-m68k.org>
>     Signed-off-by: James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@SteelEye.com>
> 
> 
> When one pulls that diff out of git with `git-show' or whatever, it doesn't
> work - patch(1) has a heart attack over the "53c700":

There's really nothing git can do about this, this is a patch oddity about the free-form message. A really strange one too, because the line is literally four spaces followed by the 53c700, and the thing is, that's not even a valid olf-fashioned patch (_without_ the four spaces, I could see that "patch" might think that it's a really old ed-

I think you have two options:

 - tell patch to take it as a unified diff:

	git show | patch -p1 -u

   should work, since patch won't be trying to figure out what kind of 
   diff it is, and won't think that the 53c700 is some kind of odd ed 
   script.

 - suppress the free-form messages, by using (for example)

	git show --pretty=oneline | patch -p1

   and now "patch" doesn't get any random commit message except for the 
   first line (which always starts with the SHA1) and hopefully cannot 
   _possibly_ interpret that to be some strange patch format.

Or, of course, just use "git-apply" instead of patch to apply the thing.

			Linus