Git: merge two working copies without committing - git-merge

Question

I have a clone for server development and another for client development. Both material will eventually make it into the same branch, but I want to synchronize them and I want it to perform a merge as though I had commit pushed and pulled, but I want to do it without that.
I'm able to make a patch with this script I wrote:
git diff --cached
git diff
on the server, but applying that to the client is much harder.
I've tried the Unix patch command, for some reason, it keeps asking me what files to patch, like I can't find them. (Yes, they're there) I've tried
git apply -3 patch.patch
but that gives a lot of errors like "with conflicts" (without making any changes) and "does not match index". It doesn't even seem to be trying to patch the other half of the files.
Stashing, then applying the patch, and then popping from the stash doesn't work, because unstashing refuses to do merges.

Answer 1

It looks like doing it without the pulling isn't going to work--I haven't found a way to do it conveniently and safely. However, my problem with committing is that I didn't want to spam the git log with garbage like:
Sync'ing to client
Sync'ing back to server
Oops! Sync'ing something I forgot to the server again!
etc.
But I can avoid all this by committing, then pulling from the remote repos. In the end, I wouldn't have to push those commits, since I would use reset to remove them all from the local repo and then, with all my changes in the working directory, do a proper commit and push it.
Gotachas
They are many.
It's commonly known that you shouldn't reset your local repo if something has already pulled from it. This is probably from the obvious confusion that results when one repo delete commits that another repo believes were there. For that reason it's important that the same reset is performed on both repos before they start sharing code again.
If after you've done your commits that you later want to reset, then pull/merge, you could make things very difficult for yourself. There should be a way to manage it, but I haven't yet figured it out. One idea is to reset, stash, pull, merge, and commit again. Another involves revert with the -n option.
Instructions
The following example assumes you have 2 clones; one called "client" and the other "server".
Following https://help.github.com/articles/adding-a-remote, setup your client's and server's repo on each others' systems to they can pull from each other.
When you want to sync, just commit on the donor system, then instead of pulling from the origin, pull from a remote. Say the client wanted a commit from the server. On the client:: git pull myserver-repo mybranch.
Merge and conflict-resolve as necessary.
Loop back to 2 as many times as is necessary.
After several iterations of 2-4, you arrive at the point when you are ready to push your changes to the server. Go to whichever local repo has all the changes you want pushed, then run git log. Find the commit before the first commit you did in 2. Copy its hash to the clipboard.
Then git reset: git reset <hash you copied in 5>.
You should then see all the commits you don't want disappear from the log and all the changes therein in your working directory. Commit and push.
It's important that you do a cleanup on the repo from which you didn't perform 5-7. So if you pushed from your server repo, you need to perform the same reset operation on your client, then dispense with the changes as you see fit. My preferred method is git stash save "delete_me".