2.32. Creating and Applying Patches and Pull Requests

First you need to make and test your changes. Then you commit your changes via TortoiseGit → Commit... on the parent folder, enter a good commit message. After that select TortoiseGit → Create Patch Serial... and choose the correct options to include your changes/commits.

Figure 2.60. The Create Patch dialog

Directory is output directory of patch. Patch file name will be created by commit subject.

Since create patch from point. You can click ... to launch refbrowse dialog to choose branch or tag.

Number Commits is limited how much patch will created.

Range is choose range of from commit to to. You can click ... to launch log dialog to choose commit.

Send Mail after create launch send mail dialog after patches created (see Section 2.32.2, “Sending patches by mail”).

You can find more information at Section G.3.50, “git-format-patch(1)”.

Important

Here Git is different to TortoiseSVN: In TortoiseSVN you directly create a patch instead of committing your changes and create a patch of the commits afterwards (in git you have a full local copy/fork of the project you cloned - commits are just local). To generate a patch containing the uncommitted, but staged, changes click on Save unified diff since HEAD. For hints where to find more information about doing version control with Git see Section 2, “Reading Guide”.

In order to send patches to the upstream authors, select the patch files and then right click on them and select TortoiseGit → Send Mail...

Figure 2.61. The Send Patches Dialog

First you need to enter the recipient(s) (To and/or CC).

Depending on the mail type (Patch as attachment or Combine One Mail) you have to enter a Subject for the mail.

Patch as attachment adds the patch(es) as attachment(s) to the mail(s) instead of inlining them.

Combine One Mail adds all patches to one mail. You have to enter a Subject for the mail in this case.

Patch files are applied to your working tree. This should be done from the same folder level as was used to create the patch. If you are not sure what this is, just look at the first line of the patch file. For example, if the first file being worked on was doc/source/english/chapter1.xml and the first line in the patch file is Index: english/chapter1.xml then you need to apply the patch to the doc/source/ folder. However, provided you are in the correct working tree, if you pick the wrong folder level, TortoiseGit will notice and suggest the correct level.

From the context menu for a patch file (.patch or .diff extension), click on TortoiseGit → Review/apply single patch... You might be prompted to enter a working tree location:

Figure 2.62. The Choose Repository Dialog

If the working tree is found, TortoiseGitMerge is launched to show and apply differences.

Patch files are applied to your working tree. For this copy the patch (or mbox) files to the root of your working tree.

From the context menu for that folder (or all marked patch files), click on TortoiseGit → Apply Patch Serial...

Figure 2.63. The Apply Patch Dialog

Add Insert patch

Up Move chosen patch up.

Down Move chosen patch down.

Remove Remove the chosen patch.

Apply Start applying the patches one by one.

You can find more information at Section G.3.3, “git-am(1)”.

Apart from sending patches (or patch serials) to other developers, there are two ways to ask other people to integrate your changes into their repositories.

First: After pushing your changes to a (public) repository, you just provide other people the URL of your repository and the name of the branch or the revision id. E.g.: git://example.com/repo.git BRANCHNAME

Second: After pushing your changes to a (public) repository, you can create a standardized (quite formal) request for other people to pull your changes and integrate them into their repository. The format pull request consists of a list of all commits and provides some statistics about changed files, so that other people can can a quick overview.

Select Request pull on the progress dialog after pushing your changes.

Figure 2.64. The Request Pull Dialog

After clicking on OK the pull request is created. Just copy it and pass it to other people who you want to pull your changes.

You can find more information at Section G.3.109, “git-request-pull(1)”.