How to use git am to apply patches from email messages?

Question

I am pretty familiar with git(the basic stuff atleast-branches, merges,collaboration with peers etc.) but the other day a friend of mine told me that we could use git with o

Answer 1

The other big thing involved is git format-patch. This will create the patches to be emailed; they can then be sent using git send-email or directly. For example:

# create a patch for each commit from origin's master to yours
git format-patch origin/master..master

# now send them... 
# there are a zillion options here, and also some configuration; read the man page
git send-email --to=maintainer@project.com --from=me@here.com ... *.patch

git am will accept the patches created by format-patch, and apply them sequentially, for example:

git am *.patch

You'll have to figure out how to export the patches in mbox format from your mail client yourself, though I suppose you could also simply send them as attachments or transfer them directly.

You can try this out for yourself entirely within one repository to see how it works. Create a set of patches as above, then check out the starting point, and use git am to apply the patches.