Binary Domain Update Released. Product Update - Valve May 3. Patch notes: * FOV options have been added in the Configuration Tool for Aiming and Normal views. PROPHET – ONE FTP LINK – TORRENT. Set in 2080, the story starts when Dan Marshall and his squad are sent to bring.
What's the best way to go about making a patch for a binary file? I want it to be simple for users to apply(a simple patch application would be nice). Running diff on the file just gives Binary files [...] differ
Mike
Mike6 Answers
Check out bsdiff and bspatch (website, manpage, paper, GitHub fork).
To install this tool:
- Windows: Download and extract this package. You will also need a copy of
bzip2.exeinPATH; download that from the 'Binaries' link here. - macOS: Install Homebrew and use it to install
bsdiff. - Linux: Use your package manager to install
bsdiff.
Courgette, by the Google Chrome team, looks like most efficient tool for binary patching executables.
To quote their data:
Here are the sizes for the recent 190.1 -> 190.4 update on the developer channel:
- Full update: 10,385,920 bytes
- bsdiff update: 704,512 bytes
- Courgette update: 78,848 bytes
Here are instructions to build it. Here is a Windows binary from 2018 courtesy of Mehrdad.
MultiplyByZer0xdelta (website, GitHub) is another option. It seems to be more recent, but otherwise I have no idea how it compares to other tools like bsdiff.
Usage:
- Creating a patch:
xdelta -e -s old_file new_file delta_file - Applying a patch:
xdelta -d -s old_file delta_file decoded_new_file
Installation:
Binary Domain Steam
- Windows: Download the official binaries.
- Chocolatey:
choco install xdelta3 - Homebrew:
brew install xdelta - Linux: Available as
xdeltaorxdelta3in your package manager.
Modern port: Very useful .NET port for bsdiff/bspatch:
Binary Domain Patch 1.02 Download
My personal choice.I tested it, and it was the only of all links, I was able out of the box to compile it (with Visual Studio, e.g. 2013). (The C++ source elsewhere is a bit outdated and needs at least a bit polishing and is only 32 bit which sets real memory (diff source size) limits. This is a port of this C++ code bsdiff and even tests if the patch results are identical to original code).
Further idea: With .NET 4.5 you could even get rid of #Zip lib, which is a dependency here.
I haven't measured if it is slightly slowlier than the c++ code, but it worked fine for me, (bsdiff: 90 MB file in 1-2 min.), and time-critical for me is only the bspatch, not the bsdiff.
I am not really sure, if the whole memory of a x64 machine is used, but I assume it. The x64 capable build ('Any CPU') works at least. Tried with a 100 MB file.
-Besides: The cited Google project 'Courgette' may be the best choice if your main target are executable files. But it is work to build it (for Windows measures, at least), and for binary files it is also using pure bsdiff/bspatch, as far as I have understood the doc.
For small, simple patches, it's easiest just to tell diff to treat the files as text with the -a (or --text) option. As far as I understand, more complicated binary diffs are only useful for reducing the size of patches.
If the files are the same size and the patch just modifies a few bytes, you can use xxd, which is commonly installed with the OS. The following converts each file to a hex representation with one byte per line, then diffs the files to create a compact patch, then applies the patch.
Assuming you know the structure of the file you could use a c / c++ program to modify it byte by byte:
Just read in the old file, and write out a new one modified as you like.
Binary Domain Controls
Don't forget to include a file format version number in the file so you know how to read any given version of the file format.