-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 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 ====================================================================== water, taken in moderation, cannot hurt anybody. -- mark twain -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) iQFDBAEBAgAtBQJE/Q7VJhhodHRwOi8vd3d3LnBvYm94LmNvbS9+dG16L3BncC90 bXouYXNjAAoJEEMlk4u+rwzjUgYIAIJtSjr6yiyPJwsEPT8wq2XkFNGm0T4LIsYu RHShhHtuddJtFCBvfOwuinMLujp/BzZdv5FHHrUa2LBqlwvYAW7YP0UjJ3llmgdj ZiSQi6O1erc79Wo/1wwB35FKDIpEWidApGwHMmmUxTq6DkL5mkK2tZkmV0Yl4yGx 3ojwOrkRmBR09RZxsNvE2A46zchJwVw22mlwXbDCpjVNJTxm9R6CMkJ5nhTybngu lFWhZ8OOZ3VTSA+6QmOnOOOw6pBxtGEqjaGWT07vVQozj3OOpHiQzfni4iqw1Kks bAZhSvBdNZsAVYhGTbN/oeLWltgb/ImwX0uRUBym+Fy1iO/p0XE= =FxpN -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list