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1Xdelta(1) Xdelta(1)
2
3NAME
4 xdelta - Invoke Xdelta
5
6SYNOPSIS
7 xdelta subcommand [ option... ] [ operand... ]
8
9DESCRIPTION
10
11 Xdelta provides the ability to generate deltas between a pair
12 of files and later apply those deltas. It operates similar to
13 the diff and patch commands, but works on binary files and does
14 not produce a human readable output.
15
16 Xdelta has three subcommands, delta, patch, and info. Delta
17 accepts two file versions and produces a delta, while patch
18 accepts the original file version and delta and produces the
19 second version. The info command prints useful information
20 about a delta. Each subcommand will be detailed seperately.
21
22 Gzip processing
23
24 Attempting to compute a delta between compressed input files
25 usually results in poor compression. This is because small
26 differences between the original contents causes changes in the
27 compression of whole blocks of data. To simplify things,
28 Xdelta implements a special case for gzip(1) compressed files.
29 If any version input to the delta command is recognized as
30 having gzip compression, it will be automatically decompressed
31 into a temporary location prior to comparison. This temporary
32 location is either the value of the TMPDIR environment
33 variable, if set, otherwise "/tmp".
34
35 The Xdelta patch header contains a flag indicating that the
36 reconstructed version should be recompressed after applying
37 the patch. In general, this allows Xdelta to operate
38 transparently on gzip compressed inputs.
39
40 There is one potential problem when automatically processing
41 gzip compressed files, which is that the recompressed content
42 does not always match byte-for-byte with the original
43 compressed content. The uncompressed content still matches,
44 but if there is an external integrity check such as
45 cryptographic signature verification, it may fail. To prevent
46 this from happening, the --pristine option disables automatic
47 gzip processing.
48
49 MD5 integrity check
50
51 By default, Xdelta always verifies the MD5 checksum of the
52 files it reconstructs. This prevents you from supplying an
53 incorrect input during patch, which would result in corrupt
54 output. Because of this feature, you can feel confident that
55 patch has produced valid results. The --noverify option
56 disables MD5 verification, but this is only recommended for
57 performance testing.
58
59 Compressed patch format
60
61 Xdelta uses a fairly simple encoding for its delta, then
62 applies zlib compression to the result. You should not have to
63 post-compress an Xdelta delta.
64
65 Delta
66
67 The delta subcommand has the following synopsis:
68
69 xdelta delta [ option... ] fromfile tofile patchout
70
71 Computes a delta from fromfile to tofile and writes it to patchout
72
73 Patch
74
75 The patch subcommand has the following synopsis:
76
77 xdelta patch [ option... ] patchin [ fromfile [ tofile ]]
78
79 Applies patchin to fromfile and produces a reconstructed
80 version of tofile.
81
82 If fromfile was omitted, Xdelta attempts to use the original
83 fromfile name, which is stored in the delta. The from file
84 must be identical to the one used to create the delta. If its
85 length or MD5 checksum differs, patch will abort with an error
86 message.
87
88 If tofile was omitted, Xdelta attempts to use the original
89 tofile name, which is also stored in the delta. If the
90 original tofile name already exists, a unique filename
91 extension will be added to avoid destroying any existing data.
92
93 Info
94 The info subcommand has the following synopsis:
95
96 xdelta info patchinfo
97
98 Prints information about patchinfo and the version it
99 reconstructs, including file names, lengths, and MD5 checksums.
100
101 Options
102 -0..9 Set the zlib compression level. Zero indicates no
103 compression. Nine indicates maximum compression.
104
105 -h, --help
106 Print a short help message and exit.
107
108 -q, --quiet
109 Quiet. Surpresses several warning messages.
110
111 -v, --version
112 Print the Xdelta version number and exit.
113
114 -V, --verbose
115 Verbose. Prints a bit of extra information.
116
117 -n, --noverify
118 No verify. Turns off MD5 checksum verification of the
119 input and output files.
120
121 -m=SIZE, --maxmem=SIZE
122 Set an upper bound on the size of an in-memory page
123 cache. For example, --maxmem=32M will use a 32 megabyte
124 page cache.
125
126 -s=BLOCK_SIZE
127 Set the block size, unless it was hard coded (20% speed
128 improvement). Should be a power of 2.
129
130 -p, --pristine
131 Disable the automatic decompression of gzipped
132 inputs, to prevent unexpected differences in the
133 re-compressed content.
134
135IDENTIFICATION
136 Author: Joshua P. MacDonald, jmacd@cs.berkeley.edu
137 Manual Page Revision: 1.2; Release Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2001 03:39:53 -0700.
138 Copyright © 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001