Makepatch

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Software & Tools

makepatch is a nifty tool that allows you to create a single patch file (input for Larry Wall's patch program) from two directory hierarchies. A mandatory tool if you have to maintain software packages. It is written in Perl, of course.

Features of this utility include:

Recursive descend through sub-directories.
Generation of commands to remove obsolete files.
Automatic handling of the patchlevel.h file first.
Automatic inclusion of Index: and Prereq: lines.
Ability to utilize specified manifest files.
Dedicated applypatch program can be used to do the patching, for improved verification and robustness.
Patch data is more reliable by relocating to the current directory.
Sources trees can come from archives, e.g. .tar.gz files.

Here's an article I wrote for The Perl Journal about makepatch.

Current version: 2.02
Archived: CPAN sites. The MetaCPAN search engine will find it for you.