This is GNU patch, which applies diff files to original files. This version of patch has many changes made by the Free Software Foundation. They add support for: * handling arbitrary binary data and large files * the unified context diff format that GNU diff can produce * merging into files instead of creating reject files * making GNU Emacs-style backup files * improved interaction with RCS and SCCS * the GNU conventions for option parsing and configuring and compilation. * better POSIX compliance They also fix some bugs. If you obtained this file as part of a "git clone", then see the README-hacking file. If this file came to you as part of a tar archive, then see the file INSTALL for compilation and installation instructions. See the file NEWS for a list of major changes in the current release. A more detailed descripiton of all changes can be found in the file ChangeLog in tar archives, and with "git log" which shows the version control history. Tutorial-style documentation for patch is included in the GNU Diffutils package; get GNU Diffutils 2.8 or later for up-to-date documentation for patch. Use `configure --disable-largefile' to disable large file support; this is reportedly necessary on Red Hat GNU/Linux 6.0 to avoid a C library bug. For MS-DOS using DJGPP tools, see the file pc/djgpp/README. For other systems, copy config.hin to config.h and change #undef statements in it to #define as appropriate for your system, and copy Makefile.in to Makefile and set the variables that are enclosed in @ signs as appropriate for your system. Please send bug reports for this version of patch to . The Free Software Foundation is distributing this version of patch independently because as of this writing, Larry Wall has not released a new version of patch since mid-1988. We have heard that he has been too busy working on other things, like Perl. He has graciously agreed to let GNU `patch' be distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License. ------ Copyright (C) 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988 Larry Wall Copyright (C) 1989-1993, 1997, 1999, 2002, 2009, 2011-2012 Free Software Foundation, Inc. This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see .