smart-apply-patch is a command to help apply patches easily. It uses the same plug-ins and many of the same options as test-patch. This means that it can, for example, fetch patches from JIRA and apply them to a local source tree.
Its simplest form is used when a patch is stored in a local file:
$ smart-apply-patch patch
This will cause the command to run through various ways to verify and then apply the patch to the current repo, including deducing a patch level.
Perhaps you just want to see if the patch even applies without changing your local repo. The --dry-run option will just test for applicability:
$ smart-apply-patch --dry-run patch
For committers of projects, there is a special mode:
$ smart-apply-patch --committer patch
that in addition to applying the patch will also attempt to:
--whitespace=fix mode--signoff and commit the change via git-am