how to make a patch ?

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Hey guys,

Hopefully someone may know the answer to my question :)
I want to create a patch for a application I developed.
Basically, I have the old application that is 100mb, and the new one that is 105mb.
A patch would be a small file that would probably be around 5mb, that we run on top of the old application to transform it into a new application.
People familiar with games know what I'm talking about.

In windows there's a lot of solutions for this , in Mac I'm having a hard time finding anything.
The only one I found is Ipatch, but it's old (2007) and crashes when I apply the patch.
Can you guys recommend anything ?

Thanks a lot,
Bruno
 
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Hey guys,

Hopefully someone may know the answer to my question :)
I want to create a patch for a application I developed.
Basically, I have the old application that is 100mb, and the new one that is 105mb.
A patch would be a small file that would probably be around 5mb, that we run on top of the old application to transform it into a new application.
People familiar with games know what I'm talking about.

In windows there's a lot of solutions for this , in Mac I'm having a hard time finding anything.
The only one I found is Ipatch, but it's old (2007) and crashes when I apply the patch.
Can you guys recommend anything ?

Thanks a lot,
Bruno

Cant help you as such, but FYI you said "In windows there's a lot of solutions for this , in Mac I'm having a hard time finding anything."

Windows is Software, not hardware, Mac is Hardware not software. So the correct terminology is "In Windows there's a lot of solutions for this , in OS X I'm having a hard time finding anything."

Just saying :) So in future if you go somewhere else looking for solutions you have the right Terminology

Cheers
 

Raz0rEdge

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Most game "patches" are actually replacing old files with new files, they aren't usually going in and modifying the binaries to make it the new one. Why cant you provide an update that will just replace your application binaries?
 

vansmith

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Moved to a more appropriate forum - this is a development question.

Learn to love the patch tool. That of course is only helpful if you're recompiling from source. Is this patch to be applied by you/an end user with access to the source or an end user who only has access to the binaries?
 
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Most game "patches" are actually replacing old files with new files, they aren't usually going in and modifying the binaries to make it the new one. Why cant you provide an update that will just replace your application binaries?

Well, I'm using Unity Engine, and Unity binary is always the same, what changes is the content of the packages inside Unity, this packages work like a Zip file.
So, if I exchange a 1 for a 2 in a game, the entire package will change, so I would need to replace a 500mb file with another 500mb file just because of a small change.
I found in Windows programs that compare binary both files, the old and the new, and are able to make patches (in this case) of size 1kb, because not much in the file has changed.
 
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Moved to a more appropriate forum - this is a development question.

Learn to love the patch tool. That of course is only helpful if you're recompiling from source. Is this patch to be applied by you/an end user with access to the source or an end user who only has access to the binaries?


Only access to the binaries, I don't think the Patch tool will work in this case.
As stated above, it's a game I need to update, and a game made in the Unity engine, so it's actually the Unity packages that need updating.
 

Raz0rEdge

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vansmith

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This is going to be a problem if you're trying to patch a monolithic file. Your best bet is to provide an application to do the patching on the end user's system.

I'm not familiar with the way that Unity creates applications but it sounds like it creates binaries similar to "traditional" OS X ones - it's a binary that's actually contained in an elaborate container (archive for Unity, folder for OS X). If this is indeed the case, can you not simply create an application that patches the end user's copy by decompressing their copy of the Unity package, replacing the necessary files and recompressing it?
 
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This is going to be a problem if you're trying to patch a monolithic file. Your best bet is to provide an application to do the patching on the end user's system.

I'm not familiar with the way that Unity creates applications but it sounds like it creates binaries similar to "traditional" OS X ones - it's a binary that's actually contained in an elaborate container (archive for Unity, folder for OS X). If this is indeed the case, can you not simply create an application that patches the end user's copy by decompressing their copy of the Unity package, replacing the necessary files and recompressing it?

Yes, I can simply replace the files, but then the size of the game will be mostly the same, and not an actual patch.
But it seems what I'm trying to find doesn't exist in OS X, I don't get why.
The closest I found was Ipatch( iPatch.org ) , but it's old, and crashes.
 

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