thezoc/zpatcher

A suite to Create and Apply patches to application and games.

🩹 ZPatcher Lib

The ZPatcher library provides a set of utilities to easily update applications and games using patch files.

It compares the contents of two different versions of the target software and creates a file with all the changes between these two versions. This file can be then distributed to users to update their copy of the software without needing to redownload the entire package.

An experienced developer can also add support to seamless update their software by adding the library to it.

💻 ZPatcher Suite

This repository also inclues a fully featured standalone implementation for the ZPatcher lib!

Features:

• Multiplatform, currently supporting Windows, OSX and Linux.
• Open Source
• Easy to Create patch files for your game/application
• Skinnable
• Command line tools available to be easily included in deployment scripts
• Client-Side automatic Download-and-Apply patching process
• File backup when applying a patch, reducing the chances of a broken build on clients
• (Launcher Only) Display the Change Log for your patches

🚀 ZLauncher quick start guide: ZLauncherQuickStartGuide.md

📖 ZPatcher Suite user guide: ZPatcherSuiteApplications.md

⚙️ Compiling

The application can be compiled in Windows, macOS and Linux with a few simple steps. Check Compiling.md for instructions on how to compile the for your target platform.

🖋️ Future features

While the application is stable and mature, there is always room from improvement. A few features are planned, but not yet implemented:

• Add hash check of the files to be updated by a patch.
• Add support for binary file deltas. Currently considering using minibsdiff, but suggestions are welcome.
• Patch merger (i.e. Given two incremental patch files, merge them in a single patch file).

Please note these features are not listed in order of priority. Also, there isn't a timeframe for those features to be added.

Pull requests are very much welcome!

📑 Third Party libraries

ZPatcher uses a few external libraries to aid in it's functions:

• libcurl
• LZMA SDK 21.07 provides the LZMA2 compression algorithm.
• Dirent interface for Windows for directory navigation under Windows
• RapidXML for XML parsing
• MD5 implementation by L. Peter Deutsch

CreatePatch and ApplyPatch uses ZPatcherLib, which uses LZMA SDK and Dirent.

ZUpdater also uses libcurl and RapidXML.

📌 Final Considerations

It is my desire to keep this project as a cross-platform lib and application. If you attempting to compile it for a new platform and run into issues and/or have a fix for it, please, don't hesitate to open a new Issue or Pull Request!

Contributions to the project are welcome! Get in touch if you want to contribute and be sure to send pull requests!

Last but not least, I'm not sure how to properly give credit to libraries used in this project. If it's done in a wrong way, I'd certainly appreciate some help on how to format and give credit in an appropriate way. :)