Patching Nextcloud

Obtaining a patch

If you found a related pull request on GitHub that solves your issue, or you want to help developers and verify a fix works, you can get a patch for the pull request.

  1. Using https://github.com/nextcloud/server/pull/26396 as an example.

  2. Append .diff to the URL: https://github.com/nextcloud/server/pull/26396.diff

  3. Download the patch to your server e.g. via wget https://github.com/nextcloud/server/pull/26396.diff (this will place 26396.diff in the local directory)

  4. Follow the Applying a patch steps.

  5. If you are on an older Nextcloud version, you might first need to go to the correct backported patch for your version.

backportbot-nextcloud linking to the pull request for an older version.

  1. You can find the appropriate version by looking for a link posted by backportbot-nextcloud to the backport pull request for your release, or by checking for a developer comment with a manual backport link. Use the .diff URL of that backport PR.

Applying a patch

Patching server

  1. Navigate to your Nextcloud server’s root directory (the one that contains the status.php file).

  2. Download the patch to your server e.g. via wget https://github.com/nextcloud/server/pull/26396.diff (this will place 26396.diff in the local directory)

  3. Apply the patch with the following command:

    patch -p 1 < ./26396.diff

  4. Alternatively, if the patch command is not available, use:

    git apply --check ./26396.diff
git apply ./26396.diff

Patching apps

  1. Navigate to the root of the app (usually apps/[APPID]/). If you cannot find the app there, use the sudo -E -u www-data php occ app:getpath APPID command to find the path.

  2. Download the patch to your server e.g. via wget https://github.com/nextcloud/<app>/pull/26396.diff (this will place 26396.diff in the local directory)

  3. Apply the patch with the same command as in Patching server.

Reverting a patch

  1. Navigate to the directory where you applied the patch.

  2. Now revert the patch with the -R option:

    patch -R -p 1 < ./26396.diff

  3. Alternatively, if the patch command is not available, use:

    git apply --reverse ./26396.diff

Notes and troubleshooting

If you found a related pull request on GitHub that solves your issue, or you want to help developers and verify a fix works, you can get a patch for the pull request.

  1. Using https://github.com/nextcloud/server/pull/26396 as an example.

  2. Append .patch to the URL: https://github.com/nextcloud/server/pull/26396.patch

  3. Download the patch to your server and follow the Applying a patch steps.

  4. In case you are on an older version, you might first need to go the the correct version of the patch.

backportbot-nextcloud linking to the pull request for an older version.

  1. You can find it by looking for a link by the backportbot-nextcloud or a developer will leave a manual comment about the backport to an older Nextcloud version. For the example above you the pull request for Nextcloud 21 is at https://github.com/nextcloud/server/pull/26406 and the patch at https://github.com/nextcloud/server/pull/26406.patch