Look for the Best Choice for Patch Management

To better understand this situation it is necessary to address what patches are and what types exist. While patches are often developed by developers other than the original authors of the project, this is not always the case. A patch can be applied both to an executable binary and to the source code of any type of program, even an operating system.

• Patch types by code
• Patches to binary files

Microsoft patches

A patch is often an update to a program’s executable file. In this case, the binary file is modified to add the changes or to be completely replaced. A visit to https://www.action1.com/p/Free-Patch-Management-pm.html happens to offer the best choices for you.

The size of the patches is variable. Some only modify a binary file of the application but others alter the content much more. If the patch only modifies the executable, it can be very small (under one megabyte). Installing patches used to be a tedious task, and with a great deal of error. An error used to mean having to reinstall the application and the patch. Nowadays, the installation of patches is carried out, in many cases, by special programs automatically.

Historically, patches were distributed on punch cards or tapes, from which the original tape had to be cut and that piece of program replaced with the new one. It is the similarity to the process that a seamstress can use when mending a piece explains the reason for the patch name.

Later, they were distributed on magnetic tapes, floppy disks, or later, on CD-ROM. The increasingly widespread use of the Internet, allowed most of the patches to be distributed and can be downloaded from the web pages of the applications. Several software companies have developed tools to assist in the task of applying a patch to a binary application. Pocket Soft developed RTPatch, and WinZip has a self-extracting utility that launches a program capable of applying a patch.

Some programs can update automatically over the Internet with little or no user intervention. It is very popular that maintenance of operating systems is done in this way. In situations where system administrators control a number of computers, this form of automation helps maintain consistency. Security patching commonly happens this way.

Source code patches

In these cases, a patch usually consists of a text file that describes modifications to be made to the source code of the program in question. This methodology is the most widespread in the field of Free Software. As an example, the most widely used web server today, Apache, evolved as a set of patches that web page managers created to add certain functionality.

Types according to their purpose

Debug patches

The objective of this type of patches is to repair bugs, or programming errors that were not detected in time in their development stage. When a program has a high probability of containing these types of errors, it is called a beta version.

Security patches

Security patches fix security holes and, whenever possible, do not modify the functionality of the program. Security patches are especially prevalent in applications that interact with the Internet.

Update patches

Windows Update gives the possibility of installing patches.It consists of modifying a program in order to incorporate newer methodologies. For example, optimizing a certain program in time, using improved algorithms, adding functionalities, eliminating obsolete sections of software, etc.