Comments on: Creating a patch file for a single commit using Git

By: Neil Gatenby

Neil Gatenby — Wed, 31 Aug 2016 10:06:30 +0000

Very useful – thanks a lot

By: Create A Patch File Using Git – How ot be in 2016

Create A Patch File Using Git – How ot be in 2016 — Wed, 03 Feb 2016 16:19:05 +0000

[…] Creating a patch file for a single commit using Git … â€“ Sully Syed. May 13, 2011. Creating a patch file for a single commit using Git. One important workflow to attempt to standardize is the method in which an organization … […]

By: androidjago

androidjago — Mon, 13 Jul 2015 11:54:14 +0000

You can also save the patch to the clipboard instead of to a file. Patch files are applied to your working copy.

By: Sully Syed

Sully Syed — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 15:17:46 +0000

Hi alphydan – the answer to your question is that the format-patch command in Git is designed to allow you to combine one or more commits into a single patch file, and that’s done by specifying a range. In this command…

$ git format-patch -M -C b29d8f2a0e6ad5595330f62f60b978fbc5696bcb~1..b29d8f2a0e6ad5595330f62f60b978fbc5696bcb 0001-The-Feed-Importer-module-will-hook-into-Drupal-s-cron-.patch

…you’re actually stating, please create (“format”) a patch that contains all of the commits from one before b29d8f2a0e6ad5595330f62f60b978fbc5696bcb (this is what the ~1 denotes, “one before”) to the commit b29d8f2a0e6ad5595330f62f60b978fbc5696bcb.

It just so happens that we only have one patch in that range, which makes the command appear to be unnecessarily long for no reason.

By: alphydan

alphydan — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 13:15:15 +0000

Would you mind explaining the meaning of repeating the commit hash twice, and the ~1.. in between them?

Why is it?

$ git format-patch -M -C b29d8f2a0e6ad5595330f62f60b978fbc5696bcb~1..b29d8f2a0e6ad5595330f62f60b978fbc5696bcb 0001-The-Feed-Importer-module-will-hook-into-Drupal-s-cron-.patch

Instead of just

$ git format-patch -M -C b29d8f2a0e6ad5595330f62f60b978fbc5696bcb 0001-The-Feed-Importer-module-will-hook-into-Drupal-s-cron-.patch