Modifying a patchfile

judgex · 10-13-2006, 11:20 PM

Someone used

diff -Naur olddir newdir

and gave me a patchfile. I want to modify the patchfile to prevent certain changes from being applied. What is the best way to do that?

exvor · 10-14-2006, 12:13 AM

patch files are written pretty plainly im not sure I understand the question. You could just comment out the fields that dont apply. maybe this link will be helpfull http://www.cpqlinux.com/patch.html

judgex · 10-14-2006, 12:25 AM

What character starts a comment in a patchfile? Does it use '#'?

exvor · 10-14-2006, 12:30 AM

Ahh further inspection of diff and patch yeilds not comment charecter so just remove the lines.

man diff
man patch

good places to start

of course if this doesnt help my neibors dog says that he cant help anymore cause hes gotta help charlie

syg00 · 10-14-2006, 12:47 AM

The patch mechanism is pretty robust, but if I was to be doing significant changes (say removing entire hunks, and deleting only some of others), I'd be inclined to create a test directory structure.
Hit that with the patch, then edit "in place". Create a new (customized) patch from that (against the original target source), and then use that new patch.
Less angst all round I would have thought.

Minor changes can be done in the (shipped) patchfile.

judgex · 10-14-2006, 01:21 AM

Exvor. When I remove lines from the patchfile the patch stops working and patch emits errors. Here is one of them:

patch: **** malformed patch at line 20: @@ -132,6 +130,7 @@

Syg00. There are too many files that need to be changed after the patch is applied.