Patch

For installation instructions see the Section called Installing Patch-2.5.4 in Chapter 6.

Official Download Location

Patch (2.5.4): 
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/patch/

Contents of Patch

(Last checked against version 2.5.4.)

The patch program modifies a file according to a patch file. A patch file usually is a list, created by the diff program, that contains instructions on how an original file needs to be modified.

Patch installs the following:

Descriptions

(Last checked against version 2.5.4.)

Program files descriptions

patch

The patch program modifies a file according to a patch file. A patch file usually is a list, created by the diff program, that contains instructions on how an original file needs to be modified. Patch is used a lot for source code patches since it saves time and space. Imagine a package that is 1 MB in size. The next version of that package only has changes in two files of the first version. It can be shipped as an entirely new package of 1 MB or just as a patch file of 1 KB, which will update the first version to make it identical to the second version. So if the first version was downloaded already, a patch file avoids a second large download.

Patch Installation Dependencies

(Last checked against version 2.5.4.)

Bash: sh
Binutils: as, ld
Coreutils: cat, chmod, echo, expr, hostname, install, mv, rm, tr, uname
Diffutils: cmp
GCC: cc, cc1, collect2, cpp0, gcc
Glibc: getconf
Grep: egrep, grep
Make: make
Sed: sed