openai/codex · warning

No files were modified.

Error message

No files were modified.

What it means

apply_hunks_to_files bails with this anyhow message when the hunk slice is empty (hunks.is_empty()), and it surfaces to callers wrapped in ApplyPatchFailure with an empty delta. It means the patch carried no Add/Delete/Update hunks, so the library refuses to report success for a no-op. Nothing is written to disk when this error appears.

Source

Thrown at codex-rs/apply-patch/src/lib.rs:483

    pub deleted: Vec<PathBuf>,
}

/// Apply the hunks to the filesystem, returning which files were added, modified, or deleted.
/// Returns an error if the patch could not be applied.
async fn apply_hunks_to_files(
    hunks: &[Hunk],
    options: ApplyPatchOptions,
    cwd: &PathUri,
    fs: &dyn ExecutorFileSystem,
    sandbox: Option<&FileSystemSandboxContext>,
    delta: &mut AppliedPatchDelta,
) -> anyhow::Result<AffectedPaths> {
    let ApplyPatchOptions {
        update_file_mode,
        follow_symlinks,
    } = options;
    if hunks.is_empty() {
        anyhow::bail!("No files were modified.");
    }

    let mut added: Vec<PathBuf> = Vec::new();
    let mut modified: Vec<PathBuf> = Vec::new();
    let mut deleted: Vec<PathBuf> = Vec::new();
    // A failed write can still have modified the target before surfacing an
    // error (for example by truncating before ENOSPC), so the accumulated
    // delta is no longer exact when a write fails.
    macro_rules! try_write {
        ($result:expr) => {
            match $result {
                Ok(value) => value,
                Err(error) => {
                    delta.exact = false;
                    return Err(anyhow::Error::from(error));
                }
            }
        };

View on GitHub (pinned to 339751715c)

Solutions

1. Treat it as a no-op, not a failure: if hunks.is_empty(), skip the apply call and return an empty delta
2. Log the patch text that produced zero hunks - usually only the Begin/End markers survived filtering
3. Check upstream hunk-filtering logic that emptied the slice

Example fix

// before
let delta = apply_hunks(&hunks, &cwd, &mut out, &mut err, fs, None).await?; // bails 'No files were modified.' on empty input

// after
if hunks.is_empty() {
    return Ok(AppliedPatchDelta::default()); // no-op: nothing to apply
}
let delta = apply_hunks(&hunks, &cwd, &mut out, &mut err, fs, None).await?;

if hunks.is_empty() {
    return Ok(AppliedPatchDelta::default()); // treat as no-op, do not call apply_hunks
}

When it happens

Trigger: Calling apply_hunks/apply_hunks_with_options with an empty hunk slice, or apply_patch on patch text that parses to zero hunks - for example only '*** Begin Patch'/'*** End Patch' markers with nothing between them.

Common situations: Model output that emitted only the Begin/End markers; upstream filtering (dedup, path filtering) that stripped every hunk before the call; CI treating this as a hard failure when it is really a no-op.

Related errors

• {error}
• InvalidInput
• invalid patch: {0}
• invalid hunk at line {line_number}, {message}
• queries must not be empty or contain empty strings

AI-assisted analysis of openai/codex@339751715c (2026-08-25). Data as JSON: /api/errors/20c2611973928511. Report an issue: GitHub.