To Patch or Not To Patch

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Recently a non-programmer friend kept reciprocating the whole project files with another program by changing a few lines on each update. The solution is an old practice of sending a patch file.

A patch file is a snippet of changes to the base code. This approach allows sharing and updating of code efficiently.

We need to command to accomplish the task.

The diff command:

diff -u file_origin file_update > change.patch

Now you send the changed patch to the recipient that holds the file_origin. The recipient can apply the changes to their file by the patch command.

The patch command:

patch < change.patch

I hope this helps.