go-patchapply

Apply parsed patches to files, in Go. Add / modify / delete / rename, reverse, dry-run — confined to a directory, transactional, never runs git.

go-patchapply is the apply half of go-mailpatch. mailpatch turns a git format-patch email into structured FileChanges; patchapply takes those — or a bare unified diff — and writes the changes to a filesystem: creating, modifying, deleting, renaming, and copying files. It can reverse a patch and dry-run one. It never executes git.

It grew out of matcha's git-mail feature, where applying a mailed patch must be safe against hostile paths and must not half-apply.

Features

• Every change type. Added, deleted, modified, renamed, copied — driven straight off mailpatch.FileChange.
• Offset-tolerant, exact-context hunks. A hunk still applies when earlier edits shifted the file; context lines must match (no silent fuzz), and a hunk that can't be placed fails with ErrConflict.
• Transactional. Every file is read and every hunk placed in memory first. If any hunk fails, nothing is written — no half-applied trees.
• Confined by construction. DirFS pins every path inside a root; a patch that tries to escape via ../ or an absolute path fails with ErrUnsafePath before touching disk.
• Reverse & dry-run. Options{Reverse: true} unapplies; Options{DryRun: true} validates the whole patch and writes nothing.
• Apply anywhere. Run against the OS (DirFS), entirely in memory (MemFS), or your own FS (a git object store, a virtual tree…).
• Zero third-party deps beyond go-mailpatch. Standard library otherwise.

Install

go get github.com/floatpane/go-patchapply

Requires Go 1.26+.

Usage

Apply a patch email to a directory

package main

import (
	"log"
	"os"

	"github.com/floatpane/go-mailpatch"
	"github.com/floatpane/go-patchapply"
)

func main() {
	raw, _ := os.ReadFile("fix.patch")

	p, err := mailpatch.ParseBytes(raw) // parse the format-patch email
	if err != nil {
		log.Fatal(err)
	}

	fsys := patchapply.NewDirFS("/path/to/repo") // confined to this root
	res, err := patchapply.ApplyPatch(fsys, p, nil)
	if err != nil {
		log.Fatal(err) // ErrConflict, ErrUnsafePath, ErrMissing, ErrExists
	}

	for _, f := range res.Files {
		log.Printf("%s %s", f.Status, f.Path) // updated/created/removed/renamed
	}
}

Apply a bare diff in memory

fsys := patchapply.NewMemFS(map[string][]byte{
	"greet.txt": []byte("hello\nworld\nbye\n"),
})

_, err := patchapply.ApplyDiff(fsys, diffText, nil)

out, _ := fsys.ReadFile("greet.txt")

Dry-run, then reverse

// Validate without writing — nil error means a real apply would succeed.
if _, err := patchapply.Apply(fsys, files, &patchapply.Options{DryRun: true}); err != nil {
	log.Fatal("patch will not apply cleanly:", err)
}

// Apply, then later undo.
patchapply.Apply(fsys, files, nil)
patchapply.Apply(fsys, files, &patchapply.Options{Reverse: true})

Just transform bytes

// No filesystem at all: apply one file's hunks to content you hold.
newContent, err := patchapply.ApplyToBytes(oldContent, fileChange)

API at a glance

Function	Does
Apply(fs, []FileChange, *Options)	apply already-parsed changes
ApplyDiff(fs, diff, *Options)	parse a bare diff (via go-mailpatch) and apply
ApplyPatch(fs, *mailpatch.Patch, *Options)	apply a parsed patch email
ApplyToBytes(orig, FileChange)	pure, filesystem-free single-file apply
NewDirFS(root) / NewMemFS(seed)	the two built-in FS implementations

Options{Reverse, DryRun}. Errors: ErrConflict, ErrUnsafePath, ErrMissing, ErrExists (compare with errors.Is).

What this is not

• Not a merge tool. No 3-way merge, no conflict markers. A hunk that doesn't apply is an error, not a <<<<<<<.
• Not git am. It writes files; it does not create commits, move HEAD, or touch the index.
• Not a fuzzy patcher. It tolerates line offset, not changed context. That's deliberate — applying a security-relevant patch to the wrong place silently is worse than failing.

Note

End-of-file newline state (\ No newline at end of file) is not tracked; a file produced from an addition ends with a newline.

Documentation

Full API reference: pkg.go.dev/github.com/floatpane/go-patchapply

Guides and diagrams: see docs/.

Sister projects

Project	Role
floatpane/go-mailpatch	The parser half — turns format-patch email into the FileChanges this library applies.
floatpane/matcha	Reference consumer — git-mail patch apply.
floatpane/go-secretbox	Sibling extraction — password-based encryption for data at rest.

Contributing

PRs welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md.

Security

It writes files from untrusted patches. Path-confinement matters — report vulnerabilities privately via SECURITY.md.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.