Diff to create patch file

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Asked 13 years ago. Active 4 months ago. Viewed 67k times. Improve this question. Kalle Richter 6, 19 19 gold badges 64 64 silver badges bronze badges. Eduardo Eduardo 18k 20 20 gold badges 60 60 silver badges 72 72 bronze badges.

The answers to this question all seem off-topic now that it has been edited to show a different diff format than the original question. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Edit: OK, 4 years later and finally going to explain what the switches mean: -u creates a Unified diff.

Improve this answer. Powerlord Powerlord If you want to get the same patch output as SVN or git diff, given two different files or folders: diff -Naur file1. Mehrad Mahmoudian 2, 28 28 silver badges 35 35 bronze badges. Andrei Taranchenko Andrei Taranchenko 1, 1 1 gold badge 10 10 silver badges 21 21 bronze badges. A patch can be applied to a directory using the -p0 option, which will apply the patch to the same directory structure as it was created in:.

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Why would you want to compare files or directories? You might have two files with the same name that look similar and want to see the difference between them. You and a friend both have the same set of files in a folder. You can use diff to create a patch containing only the changes made to those files, send it to them, and then bring their copy up to date without having to re-download everything.

Examples Comparing Files with diff in Linux This is the simplest usage of the diff command and will output the difference between the two supplied files to the console: diff file1. Comparing Large Files or Directories Containing Large Files diff is an intensive process — every file being compared needs to be read and compared. Creating a Patch for a File To create a patch — a list of differences between two files that can be applied to another copy of the first file to make it identical to the second, the following command can be used: diff -u file1.

Installing a Patch for a File When your friend receives the patch, they can apply it using the following patch command: patch original. Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer. Make sure it's a upatch! Sign up or log in Sign up using Google. Sign up using Facebook. Sign up using Email and Password.

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