Choosing Ideal Creation Paths

When patching complete directories at once GenPatch determines and chooses automatically the most suitable start file(s) file to create a end state file. Our unique algorithms allow this to take place in a unnoticeable amount of time frame. Instead of only patching identical filenames and you can explicitly tell it every file that was renamed, GenPatch finds the best suited file even among even several very similar files.

Of course the Auto-detection may not be desirable in every instance or needs more guiding information.

If some files should not be created by using patches, you can use the "-nopatch=pattern" option of GenPatch. This option keeps GenPatch from even considering to use (and require) any start state for that file, but to include the file in complete. This may be very advisable with smaller files that you suspect your end users could have deleted, but you want to have them present.

If you think that a file is unimportant and should not cause the patch file to fail, you could use the "-unimportant=pattern" option of GenPatch. This makes DoPatch attempt to update the file, but if it fails to find a suitable start state, it will tolerate this and proceed. If you'd not declare the file as unimportant, then the failure to update this unimportant file would stop your patch from working. It might be advisable that you select only a few files that are truly important and tolerate to fail with most others.

And you can force the GenPatch to obey rules when you specify guiding patterns. Using e.g. "-require=*.dat" you introduce a requirement that ".dat" files must be created from ".dat" files only. You can force GenPatch to use any creation path you desire. See Guiding Patterns for more information on this topic.