Applying a patch from GitHub with curl

03/11/2022 in #terminal #git

I was looking for a way to apply patches to a Git repository without having to download a .patch file. It turns out it can easily be done with curl:

# Apply changes from a PR to your repository
curl https://github.com/org/project/pull/1.patch | git apply -v

# Apply changes from a commit to your repository
curl https://github.com/org/project/commit/e765432.patch | git apply -v

Even better in some use cases, you can directly apply changes and commit them directly with git am:

# Cherry-pick commits from a PR to your local repository
curl https://github.com/org/project/pull/1.patch | git am --signoff --keep

# Cherry-pick a commit to your repository
curl https://github.com/org/project/commit/e765432.patch | git am --signoff --keep

The --signoff flag will add a line about the original author of the commit while --keep will avoid striping content in brackets from the commit message (see this Stackoverflow answer for more details).