---
date: 2022-11-03
title: Applying a patch from GitHub with curl
---

# 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`:

```sh
# 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`:

```sh
# 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](https://stackoverflow.com/a/66593199/14997312) for more details).