Re: git-apply does not work in a sub-directory of a Git repository

Junio C Hamano [off-list ref] writes:

So a better alternative may be to conditionally disable the "Paths
outside are not touched regardless of --include" logic, i.e. we
exclude paths outside by default just as before, but if there is at
least one explicit "--include" given, we skip this "return 0".

That way, we do not have to commit to turning --include/--exclude to
pathspec (which I agree is a huge change in behaviour that may not
be a good idea) and we do not have to add "--full-tree" that is only
understood by "apply" but not other commands that operate on the
current directory by default.

And the necessary change to do so may look like this.  With this:

    $ git show >P
    $ git reset --hard HEAD^
    $ cd t
    $ git apply -v ../P
    $ git apply -v --include=\* ../P

seem to work as expected.

diff --git a/builtin/apply.c b/builtin/apply.c
index c993333..1af3f7e 100644
--- a/builtin/apply.c
+++ b/builtin/apply.c

@@ -1955,8 +1955,8 @@ static int use_patch(struct patch *p)
 	const char *pathname = p->new_name ? p->new_name : p->old_name;
 	int i;
 
-	/* Paths outside are not touched regardless of "--include" */
-	if (0 < prefix_length) {
+	/* Paths outside are not touched when there is no explicit "--include" */
+	if (!has_include && 0 < prefix_length) {
 		int pathlen = strlen(pathname);
 		if (pathlen <= prefix_length ||
 		    memcmp(prefix, pathname, prefix_length))