Thread: Diff and Patch

A few people have asked about my use of patch for distributing my MODs and if they can have a text file with the changes. Some people are not familiar with patch, some are worried that patch will not work with their existing MOD'd files.

Actually, thats what a patch is. And I put it together as a patch so that it will work with most code. (it only modifies the certain parts of the file it is scanning for).

If you read the patch files and you'll see very clearly where to look and what to change. The 'patch' program uses a context modification syntax to locate a particular section in a file and then to apply the designated changes. If the system is unable to correctly determine how to make the change, it will not substitute the changes and will give an exception report. However patch is very good about figuring out how to apply the changes. If you've not made changes to that specific section of code, you should have no problems.

I strongly encourage MODers to learn the patch system and begin to use it. It's only a little more work, however it will makes most site owners jobs much easier than having to make the changes manually.

Garth

I think the diff/patch subsystem in use by the open source community should be THE tool for this.

http://tools.devchannel.org/devtools...7.shtml?tid=46

In an open source environment, you have many people with various versions of the same software trying to decide what features they want to implement.

Maintainers (aewebworks in this case) can then incorporate any features THEY wish to use into the next release, saving people the issue of having to apply a particular patch.

we can reach a consencous here and then propose it on aewebforums

I like the patch idea like darkstar uses in his mods. If was a simple easy mod to patch and works great. I wish all mod installs were built up like that.