Reading and applying patches

[Ed Greshko]

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? 
> 
> 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?
> Can someone point me to some URLs where I can understand more about
> these patch files? 

Patches are applied via the "patch" command.

Normally, it you simply do "patch -p0 < patchfilename"


-- 
Brain damage is all in your head.
-- Karl Lehenbauer