Create a patch including specific files in git

Question

Let\'s say that I am 7 commits ahead of the origin/master repo. I would like to create a patch that includes in the patch specific files that were changed, not all the files

Answer 1

You can restrict the output of git diff by listing paths at the end of the command (after a -- to avoid any potential clashes between path names and branch names). For example, you could do the following:

git diff origin/master HEAD -- app/models/region.rb doc/ > changes.patch

... to generate a patch that only shows the differences within a particular file and a particular directory.

Answer 2

You can include files in the patches with:

git format-patch <rev> <files...>

Example

git format-patch HEAD^^^ Makefile

Will give you three files 0001-[commit] ... 0003-[commit] only containing the Makefile.