diffutils: Tips for Patch Consumers
11.2 Tips for Patch Consumers
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A patch producer should tell recipients how to apply the patches, so the
first rule of thumb for a patch consumer is to follow the instructions
supplied with the patch.
GNU ‘diff’ can analyze files with arbitrarily long lines and files
that end in incomplete lines. However, older versions of ‘patch’ cannot
patch such files. If you are having trouble applying such patches, try
upgrading to a recent version of GNU ‘patch’.