Rick Keefer wrote:
>
> Hey all,
>
> Well here's another newbie question. What is a patch and how is it installed?
A patch is a small (or in the case of some kernel patches, rather large)
piece of source code that you apply to your current source code.
Say I'm developing a piece of software and have a number of people who
are using it. I make the source code to my program available for them
to download, compile and install. It could be a pretty hefty download
to grab it the first time. When I make a fix or add a feature to my
program, it's wasteful to ask everyone to download ALL of the code
again, so I create a patch. Put simply, a patch file contains the
differences between my old version of the code and my new version.
My users download the small patch, use the patch program to apply it to
my source code, and now we're all working from the updated code.
All in all, it's a really useful tool (and comes from the author of
another useful tool, Larry Wall of Perl fame).
--
Steve Philp
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
