threads / discuss / 31589

Confused by git am error message.

Subject: Confused by git am error message.

## tl;dr

2 messages between Sep 18, 2012 and Sep 18, 2012.

replies: 1people: 2as markdown or json

Philip Oakley· Sep 18, 2012, 21:51 UTC · lore

[a user confusion report] I was updating my patch series manually aand made a mistake, so the series didn't apply properly. However the error message confused me.

    ...
    Applying: Doc clean: add See Also links
    fatal: corrupt patch at line 17
    Patch failed at 0008 Doc clean: add See Also links
    When you have resolved this problem run "git am --resolved".
    ...

In my case I resolved the _patch_ error, and then expected that doing the 'git am --resolved' would try to re-apply the patch and continue happily - I had checked that the status was clean - but it didn't.

    Philip@PHILIPOAKLEY /c/msysgit179/git (nextDoc|AM)
    $ git am --resolved
    Applying: Doc clean: add See Also links
    No changes - did you forget to use 'git add'?
    If there is nothing left to stage, chances are that something else
    already introduced the same changes; you might want to skip this 
patch.

I'm not quite sure what the 'right' answer should be, maybe a --reapply option, or slightly different words in the message to highlight that the user is to make their worktree/index look like the patch _had_ applied, or something else?

Philip

Junio C Hamano· Sep 18, 2012, 22:51 UTC · re: Philip Oakley · lore

Re: Confused by git am error message.

"Philip Oakley" <philipoakley@iee.org> writes:

Show 14 quoted lines

> [a user confusion report]
> I was updating my patch series manually aand made a mistake, so the
> series didn't apply properly. However the error message confused me.
>
>    ...
>    Applying: Doc clean: add See Also links
>    fatal: corrupt patch at line 17
>    Patch failed at 0008 Doc clean: add See Also links
>    When you have resolved this problem run "git am --resolved".
>    ...
>
> In my case I resolved the _patch_ error, and then expected that doing
> the 'git am --resolved' would try to re-apply the patch and continue
> happily - I had checked that the status was clean - but it didn't.

I recall we went back and forth before settling to the current wording. The "have resolved this problem" in that sentence wants to say "The underlying 'apply --index' did not manage to update the working tree and the index to the state a perfect patch would have updated, so please help me by doing so yourself".

When it did not apply (i.e. not "conflicted when run as 'am -3'"), an alternative is to edit $GIT_DIR/rebase-apply/patch to make it applicable, and say "git am" again _without_ "--resolved". But that is not what the message is suggesting.