Hello Git developers,
thank your for that great developer tool!
I noticed a behavior with git apply which I assume is a bug. So I am
going to report it here.
Thanks for reading,
Deniz Bahadir
## What did you do before the bug happened? (Steps to reproduce your issue)
1. `git clone` a Git repository which contains a Git submodule.
2. Initialize the submodule by using `git submodule update --init`.
3. Change into that Git submodule directory and create a patch for a
file in it.
(Note: Here we assume the directory is called `submodule` and the
to-be-patched file is called `file.txt`.)
```
cd submodule
echo "extra-tokens" >> file.txt
git diff -u file.txt > file.txt.patch
git checkout file.txt
```
4.a) Copy the directory of this Git submodule into another directory
which itself is not located in or beneath a directory under Git
control.
4.b) Same as 4.a) but additionally remove the `.git` file in that
copied directory.
4.c) Rename the directory of this submodule but do not inform Git
about it (e.g. do a `mv submodule submodule_renamed`).
4.d) Same as 4.c) but additionally remove the `.git` file in that
moved directory.
5. For each directory created under step 4 change into it and run:
```
git apply --unsafe-paths -v file.txt.patch
```
## What did you expect to happen? (Expected behavior)
I expected all four different scenarios to succeed and to successfully
patch `file.txt` in step 5.
## What happened instead? (Actual behavior)
Case 5.a) fails with the following message:
```
fatal: not a git repository: /tmp/submodule/../.git/modules/submodule
```
Case 5.b) succeeds with the following message:
```
Checking patch file.txt...
Applied patch file.txt cleanly.
```
Case 5.c) fails with the following message:
```
fatal: cannot chdir to '../../../submodule': No such file or directory
```
Case 5.d) fails with the following message:
```
Skipped patch 'file.txt'.
```
## What's different between what you expected and what actually happened?
I would have expected that option `--unsafe-paths` allows me to patch
any file using `git apply` not matter where the directory is located
and whether there is a `.git` file or directory in any of its parent
directories or not.
That would have allowed me to use `git apply --unsafe-paths` as an
alternative to `patch` (which might not be available on all platforms)
as written on `git apply`'s man page.
## Anything else you want to add:
Alternatively, maybe it would be better if `git apply` provides an
extra option `--simulate-patch` or something similar which really
works as a `patch` replacement in all situations (and does not
consider `.git` files or directories at all).
## Additional system info.
[System Info]
git version:
git version 2.33.1.windows.1 and 2.25.1 (ubuntu)
cpu: x86_64
sizeof-long: 4
sizeof-size_t: 8
shell-path: /bin/sh
