Re: Binary Differencer/Patcher for OS X?
Re: Binary Differencer/Patcher for OS X?
- Subject: Re: Binary Differencer/Patcher for OS X?
- From: Dietrich Epp <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2003 00:01:27 -0700
On Thursday, Apr 10, 2003, at 16:34 US/Pacific, Steve Bennett wrote:
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...)
Don't forget the rsync algorithm, which is dead simple and can even be
used to diff files on separate computers with slow connections. Yah,
it's GPL (thank the gods), but it is very easy to explain, understand,
and implement. As usually implemented, it doesn't produce diffs in the
traditional sense, but this is neither necessary nor difficult to add.
http://samba.anu.edu.au/rsync/tech_report/
(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)
You can't link GPL software into proprietary code, and you can't
distribute it without pointing to the source code. However, plenty of
people use and distribute GPL software with proprietary programs. Many
GPL'd programs are simply the best, anyway. You should read the GPL
again, I don't think you get it.
(FLAME ON -- Really, I understand the concept behind the MIT & BSD
licenses, but allowing others to create derivative projects based on
your source code without giving any of the modifications back to the
community is just inefficient, as it leads to quicker forks and
divergent functionality. A proprietary fork, for example, could break
compatibility with the free (libre, not gratis) version, and attempt to
unfairly dominate the software's niche with oh-so-common corporate
tactics. The cost to the community is immense when, for example,
Windows users might be unable to transfer to Linux. <grrr> -- FLAME
OFF)
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