git-apply fails on creating a new file, with both -p and --directory specified

[Matthias Lehmann <mat@matlehmann.de>]

Hi all,

the subject of this mail may read familiar to some - there was a discussion in 
November last year (see 
http://kerneltrap.org/mailarchive/git/2009/11/23/16899/) concerning this 
problem.

Today I had this same issue with git 1.7.0.4. Reading the above mentioned 
discussion and seaching the net did not help me in finding a solution to the 
problem. 

I have to apply patches from one repository to another repository, which have 
a different layout (I am working on splitting one big repository into several 
smaller ones, while development still continues on the big repository).

So I did

big-repo$ git format-patche -o /tmp/foo 
small-repo$ git apply -p2 --directory=some/path --check /tmp/foo/*

and get

fatal: git diff header lacks filename information when removing 2 leading 
pathname components (line 37)

the patch looks like this:

35| diff --git a/xyz/bar.jpg b/xyz/bar.jpg
36| new file mode 100644
37| index 
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..3dcce2e1f68586ed2089d86b1bf4e7e41c818d97
38| GIT binary patch
39| literal 8791



Since this problem was discussed before - is there a solution?
This is something like a showstopper for me right now, so I am very thankful 
for any hints.

Best regards,

Mat