Info Catalog diffutils: Interactive Merging diffutils: Top diffutils: Making Patches

diffutils: Merging with patch

 
 10 Merging with 'patch'
 ***********************
 
 'patch' takes comparison output produced by 'diff' and applies the
 differences to a copy of the original file, producing a patched version.
 With 'patch', you can distribute just the changes to a set of files
 instead of distributing the entire file set; your correspondents can
 apply 'patch' to update their copy of the files with your changes.
 'patch' automatically determines the diff format, skips any leading or
 trailing headers, and uses the headers to determine which file to patch.
 This lets your correspondents feed a mail message containing a
 difference listing directly to 'patch'.
 
    'patch' detects and warns about common problems like forward patches.
 It saves any patches that it could not apply.  It can also maintain a
 'patchlevel.h' file to ensure that your correspondents apply diffs in
 the proper order.
 
    'patch' accepts a series of diffs in its standard input, usually
 separated by headers that specify which file to patch.  It applies
 'diff' hunks (⇒Hunks) one by one.  If a hunk does not exactly
 match the original file, 'patch' uses heuristics to try to patch the
 file as well as it can.  If no approximate match can be found, 'patch'
 rejects the hunk and skips to the next hunk.  'patch' normally replaces
 each file F with its new version, putting reject hunks (if any) into
 'F.rej'.
 
    ⇒Invoking patch, for detailed information on the options to
 'patch'.
 

Menu

 
· patch Input            Selecting the type of 'patch' input.
· Revision Control       Getting files from RCS, SCCS, etc.
· Imperfect              Dealing with imperfect patches.
· Creating and Removing  Creating and removing files with a patch.
· Patching Timestamps   Updating timestamps on patched files.
· Multiple Patches       Handling multiple patches in a file.
· patch Directories      Changing directory and stripping directories.
· Backups                Whether backup files are made.
· Backup Names           Backup file names.
· Reject Names           Reject file names.
· patch Messages         Messages and questions 'patch' can produce.
· patch and POSIX        Conformance to the POSIX standard.
· patch and Tradition    GNU versus traditional 'patch'.
 

Info Catalog diffutils: Interactive Merging diffutils: Top diffutils: Making Patches