Re: [PATCH] Make apply accept the -pNUM option like patch does.

[Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>]

On Tue, 31 Jan 2006, Daniel Barkalow wrote:
>
> This only applies to traditional diffs, not to git diffs.

Also, be careful: the default for git-apply is very different from the 
default for a regular "patch".

"patch" without any "-p" at all will try to automagically figure out the 
right file, which has burnt me more than once when you have the same name 
(usually "Makefile") in multiple sub-directories and "patch" makes the 
wrong automagic guess.

git-apply with this patch will continue to use -p1. No guessing, no gray 
areas. 

I do believe that the right thing to do is to just make SVN output "-p1" 
patches (I cannot imagine that you can't do so, since -p1 is a much saner 
format than -p0), but I guess teaching git-apply to take -pN for 
traditional patches is fine.

But if somebody suggests we do the automatic thing that "patch" does, I'll 
scream. Too many times have I been burnt by patch being "helpful" (in 
general, patch by default will try very hard to apply a patch, whether it 
makes sense or not).

		Linus