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

On Thu, Mar 24, 2016 at 11:50 PM, Junio C Hamano [off-list ref] wrote:

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.

Suppose I don't like git-apply's default behavior, I make an alias.ap
= "apply --include=*". So far so good, but when I want to limit paths
back to "subdir" (it does not have to be the same as cwd), how do I do
it without typing resorting to typing "git apply" explicitly ? I don't
see an option to cancel out --include=*. For "git ap --exclude=*
--include=subdir" to have that effect, we need to change

for (i = 0; i < limit_by_name.nr; i++) {

in use_patch() to

for (i = limit_by_name.nr - 1; i >= 0; i--) {

Simple change, but not exactly harmless.

Off topic, but --include/--exclude should be able to deal with
relative path like --include=../*.c or --include=./*. I guess nobody
has complained about it, so it's not needed.
-- 
Duy