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Chong Yu Meng wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I'm having some difficulty understanding patching in general. A
> little background: I downloaded the source tarball for a program and
> it will not "make" cleanly. Checking the forum on the website,
> someone had published a patch in the form of text in an email that
> looks like this:
>
> --- mlrate/mlrate.c 2003-01-27 10:31:31.000000000 +0100
> +++ mlrate.new/mlrate.c 2004-11-22 12:37:52.086783325 +0100
> @@ -25,6 +25,8 @@
> #include <string.h>
> ... and continues for a bit longer
>
> I assume that I should copy and paste the text into a separate file
> and save it. But how do I apply the patch to the source file, which
> is mlrate.c?
You assume correctly. mlrate.c refers to a file in the tarball you
are patching.
To apply this patch you would use the patch program. Usage is
something like this:
cd /where/your/mlrate/tarball/is/
patch -p1 < /path/to/your/saved/patch
The -p1 option tells patch to strip off the first directory when
looking for the file(s) to patch. So if you have a diff that starts
with "--- mlrate/mlrate.c" and you're in the directory where mlrate.c
is, -p1 would remove the mlrate/ part from the diff and find the file
to patch properly.
> Also, how do I read the file? From some patch files I have come
> across, they have "pluses" and "minuses" and other notation. What do
> they mean?
Lines beginning with a plus are being added by the patch, lines with a
minus are being removed. The lines that start with either 3 minuses
or plusses indicate the path of file that's being patched.
> Can someone point me to some URLs where I can understand more about
> these patch files?
I'm sure there are some good tuturials on diffing and patching, but I
don't have any links handy. Most of the little that I know I picked
up here and there over the years. You might find the diffutils manual
useful though.
http://www.gnu.org/software/diffutils/manual/html_node/index.html
- --
Todd OpenPGP -> KeyID: 0xBEAF0CE3 | URL: www.pobox.com/~tmz/pgp
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water, taken in moderation, cannot hurt anybody.
-- mark twain
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