Binary Differencer/Patcher for OS X?
Binary Differencer/Patcher for OS X?
- Subject: Binary Differencer/Patcher for OS X?
- From: Steve Bennett <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2003 19:34:46 -0400
This one is not really Cocoa specific, but as our project is Cocoa based and
I couldn't think of any more appropriate mailing list, I'm posting it
here...
Does anyone know of a program or set of programs that run on Mac OS X and
allow me to take two versions of a binary file, create a small patch file
from them, and later recreate the later version of the binary file from the
older version of the file and it's patch? I need to do both of these native
on OS X, and distribute it as part of our commercial package's automated
update program.
On Windows, there are many commercial programs to do this (we used RTPatch),
but I don't know of any such commercial program that does this on the Mac.
A scouring of the Net found me three source-code possibilities:
bdiff - looks simple and ideal (we don't need anything complex), but is GPL
licensed, so I can't use it.
xdelta - somewhat more complicated than we need, but also seems workable if
I can figure out how to build it. (Tricky) However, it's *ALSO* GPL
licensed, so I can't use it. (I *did* find a reference saying they had
switched to a FreeBSD license, but couldn't find a distribution that didn't
have a GPL license and GPL dependencies...)
(FLAME ON -- Really, I understand the basic concept behind the GPL license,
but making GPL software completely unusable for commercial projects is
bloody annoying. I've stuck more than my share of software into the public
domain and it will be a cold day in Hell before I GPL one bit of it. GPL
software *isn't* free -- the cost is your OWN code, which is worth a lot
more... <grrr> -- FLAME OFF)
vcdiff -- This one is a weirdie, and I'm not sure it does what I want. It's
only distributed by AT&T as part of a package called vcodex, that has a
license allowing you to use it for educational purposes, or for use in HTTP
1.1 transfers only. (I need to read this license again, it's a strange
one...)
Anyone else have any pointers to products, source code, or an easy to
implement algorithm which can do this? (A non-GPLed Cocoa class would be
*perfect*, BTW, not that I'm expecting one to be out there... <grin>)
Thanks,
-->Steve Bennett
_______________________________________________
cocoa-dev mailing list | email@hidden
Help/Unsubscribe/Archives:
http://www.lists.apple.com/mailman/listinfo/cocoa-dev
Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.