From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2008 20:02:40 GMT
Subject: Re: Why doesn't git-apply remove empty file
Message-ID: <alpine.LFD.1.10.0808141258180.3324@nehalem.linux-foundation.org>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.LFD.1.10.0808141246190.3324@nehalem.linux-foundation.org>



On Thu, 14 Aug 2008, Linus Torvalds wrote:
>
>   There's no way to do an all-or-nothing patch, which is often 
>    a huge requirement.

Side note: there's a way to do a "nothing or nothing" thing, and then test 
the return value of whether the do-nothing was successful or not.

So a reasonably common operation thing for scripting GNU patch is to 
literally do

	patch --dry-run

first to see if the patch will succeed.

..or to play games with backup and reject files after-the-fact, of course.

			Linus