git: patch does not apply

git apply --reject --whitespace=fix mychanges.patch worked for me.

Explanation

The --reject option will instruct git to not fail if it cannot determine how to apply a patch, but instead to apply the individual hunks it can apply and create reject files (.rej) for hunks it cannot apply. Wiggle can “apply [these] rejected patches and perform word-wise diffs”.

Additionally, --whitespace=fix will warn about whitespace errors and try to fix them, rather than refusing to apply an otherwise applicable hunk.

Both options together make the application of a patch more robust against failure, but they require additional attention with respect to the result.

For the whole documentation, see https://git-scm.com/docs/git-apply.

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