Git apply doesn't create new files?

Question

I'm trying to create patch by diff and apply it. My patch has new file and after apply I'm getting an error.

git diff master origin/master > patch1.diff
git apply patch1.diff -v

Checking patch test3...
error: test3: No such file or directory

Patch:

diff --git a/test3 b/test3
deleted file mode 100644
index df6b0d2..0000000
--- a/test3
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1 +0,0 @@
-test3

What I'm doing wrong or git apply doesn't create new files?

Answer 1

You're creating your patch backwards - that patch is trying to delete that file. I think you wanted:

git diff origin/master master > patch1.diff

You might find git format-patch to be helpful. If you currently have master checked out, you can just do:

git format-patch origin/master

That command will yield a bunch of patch files, one for each commit different between your branch and origin/master. You can then apply those using git am and retain all of the extra data like commit message and author information.