Patch file

MODPATCH reads a patchfile and executes the commands in the patchfile to change the contents of one or more modules. […] You can use the BUILD command or any word processing program to create patchfiles.

You do need all of the patchfiles up to the version that you’re upgrading to. Usually, these patchfiles are rather small, and are gzipped on the archive sites.

diff/patch—The combination of diff and patch enables you to distribute updates (to documents, source code, and so on) in an efficient manner. Rather than sending copies of entire updated files, you can use diff to create patchfiles that only contain the changes between one version of a file and the next.

To apply the differences in a difference report to the original file compared in the report, use patch. It takes as arguments the name of the file to be patched and the name of the difference report file (or “patchfile”). It then applies the changes specified in the patchfile to the original file. This is especially useful for distributing different versions of a file—small patchfiles may be sent across networks easier than large source files.

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