[johnisgood]

What does "applying patches that don't apply" mean exactly?

I know about wiggle, but I have not used it, to be honest.

[smcameron]

It means that if you do "patch -p1 --dry-run < some.patch", and it complains that it doesn't apply, wiggle can sometimes apply it anyway, and also, if you do "patch -p1 < some.patch", and it partially applies but with rejected hunks, wiggle can try to apply the rejected hunks.