How to remove whitespace changes from a branch for a PR

remove-whitespace.md

How to remove whitespace-only changes from a PR

1. Create a new local branch that will contain your changes without the whitespace

   git checkout -b tmp-branch

2. Merge the changes that contain whitespace into your current branch WITHOUT committing the changes

   git merge --no-commit

3. Create a diff that ignores whitespace and apply it to your branch. This creates a diff in unified format, ignoring whitespace, and not colorizing the output. Then using git to apply (like applying a patch) to the current directory.

   git diff -U0 -w --no-color | git apply --cached --ignore-whitespace --unidiff-zero -

4. Remove any remaining unstaged changes. The unstaged changes are the whitespace-only changes

   git checkout .

5. Add any new files back to the staged changes since the diff/apply method ignores net-new files.

   git add .

6. Verify your work

   git diff --cached

7. Commit your work!

   git commit

Thanks Josh for this tutorial!

This worked for me:

git checkout master
git checkout -b tmp-branch
git merge --no-commit [revision number]
git reset
git diff -U0 -w --no-color | git apply --cached --ignore-whitespace --unidiff-zero -
git checkout .
git add .
git diff --cached
git commit

You're welcome!