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I have a big patch (foo), consisting of diffs from many files. I want to exclude a specific diff (corresponding to a single file) from this patch. The beginning of this diff looks like this:

diff --git a/business/smyt/scans/deboo.2015.02.11.pdf b/business/smyt/scans/deboo.2015.02.11.pdf
new file mode 100644
index e69de29bb2d1d6434b8b29ae775ad8c2e48c5391..4d5780b2dc843386b9641f4cb42a4ba4a7996cae
GIT binary patch
literal 106388

I'm trying the following command. Filterdiff is available on Debian, at least, in the patchutils package.

filterdiff --exclude='*/deboo.2015.02.11.pdf' foo > newfoo

but it returns the same file. This is probably user error. The man page (man filterdiff) says:

-x PATTERN, --exclude=PATTERN
       Exclude files matching PATTERN. All other lines in the input are displayed.

This probably requires usage of regular expressions, something which I have never been comfortable with.

Another method of doing this would also be fine. I could manually edit the patch as a last resort, but automated methods are generally better.

share|improve this question
    
I tried filterdiff --exclude='.*/deboo.2015.02.11.pdf' foo > newfoo. Still doesn't work. – Faheem Mitha Mar 7 '15 at 8:33
up vote 1 down vote

It might be that filterdiff doesn't know how to handle the git option as your PATTERN seems ok:

$ mkdir a b
$ seq 5 > a/file1
$ rm file1 
rm: remove regular file ‘file1’? y
$ seq 5 > b/file2
$ seq 4 > b/file1
$ seq 4 > a/file2
$ diff -r -u a b
diff -r -u a/file1 b/file1
--- a/file1 2015-03-07 09:24:15.548744157 +0100
+++ b/file1 2015-03-07 09:24:37.804744069 +0100
@@ -2,4 +2,3 @@
 2
 3
 4
-5
diff -r -u a/file2 b/file2
--- a/file2 2015-03-07 09:24:42.448744051 +0100
+++ b/file2 2015-03-07 09:24:30.684744097 +0100
@@ -2,3 +2,4 @@
 2
 3
 4
+5
$ diff -r -u a b > my.patch
$ wc my.patch
 16  46 302 my.patch
$ filterdiff --exclude='*/file2' my.patch | wc
      9      28     178
$ filterdiff --exclude='*/file2' my.patch 
diff -r -u a/file1 b/file1
--- a/file1 2015-03-07 09:24:15.548744157 +0100
+++ b/file1 2015-03-07 09:24:37.804744069 +0100
@@ -2,4 +2,3 @@
 2
 3
 4
-5
diff -r -u a/file2 b/file2
share|improve this answer
    
There is also the depth issue. There is a p flag for handling this, like with patch, but again I'm not sure how to use it. – Faheem Mitha Mar 7 '15 at 8:53
    
@FaheemMitha I don't think that patch depth is relevant here. Have you tried cut-and-pasting the full name? – Anthon Mar 7 '15 at 9:02
    
Sorry, not sure what you mean. – Faheem Mitha Mar 7 '15 at 9:09
    
filterdiff --exclude='a/business/smyt/scans/deboo.2015.02.11.pdf' foo instead of using the * – Anthon Mar 7 '15 at 9:11
    
filterdiff --exclude='a/business/smyt/scans/deboo.2015.02.11.pdf' foo doesn't work either. – Faheem Mitha Mar 8 '15 at 6:54

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