Re: git mailinfo with patch parser

Florian Weimer [off-list ref] writes:

git mailinfo splits a message into headers, commit message, and patch
text, but does not actually parse the patch text.  As a result, the
patch portion produced by git mailinfo can contain something that
looks like a patch, but actually isn't.

Yes, mailinfo is about splitting the header, log message and the
remainder, and parsing the remainder to use it as a patch text is
left to the consumer of the "patch" file it produces.

Is there a way to get the patch data, as parsed by git apply or git
am, and dump it back in patch format, without actually applying the
patch to a working tree?

So, "the patch data as used by apply" is what you get from mailinfo.
If it is a patch that applies to what you have in the working tree
and/or the index is something you can/must ask "git apply".  IOW,
when "git mailinfo" stored in $GIT_DIR/rebase-apply/patch the
"remainder" of the message, you could

	git apply --check [--index] $GIT_DIR/rebase-apply/patch

to see if it is an OK patch.  If it is, then there is no need to
further "dump it back in patch format"; what you just fed to "apply
--check" is already in the patch format.