Eclipse Cookbook

6.11. Creating Code Patches

Problem

You need to coordinate your development with another team of developers using a patch they can install to update their code.

Solution

Create a code patch so that they can update their code. (Note that this is a code patch, not a binary patch. Eclipse can use this patch to update source code to match another version.)

Discussion

Say your version of the code displays the text "No problems here.“:

public static void main(String[] args)
{
    System.out.println("No problems here.");
}

But the code the other team is using from the CVS repository displays "No problems at all.“:

public static void main(String[] args)
{
    System.out.println("No problems at all.");
}

To update the other developers without changing version numbers, you can create a code patch. To create a code patch, Eclipse compares your local code to what’s in the repository and creates a patch file holding the differences.

To create a code patch using your local version of a file as the version to which the patch will update the version in the repository, save your file locally, right-click it, and select Team→ Create Patch, opening the dialog shown in Figure 6-12.

Figure 6-12. Creating a new patch

In this example, we’ll save the file named patch in the current workspace, as shown in Figure 6-12. Click the Finish button to save the patch.

This creates the text file named patch. Here’s what that file looks ...