patching non-text files

Hi
I know how to use diff / patch on text files. BSD also offers bsdiff and
bspatch for executables.

Is there a good program for creating diff-files on pictures (gif, jpg etc.)
and video files (mpg, avi, etc). Occasionally you have the same file in
several "incarnations" - sometimes even their sizes are the same, yet they
slightly differ. Keeping both on your disk simply takes too much space, so
creating a diff / patch-file might be a space conserving solution.
Unfortunately, diff / patch are excellent for text files, but won't do the
job on multimedia files. bsdiff and bspatch are geared towards executables
and take their structure into consideration while processing them. So they
are a rather bad choice for multimedia files.

Any recommendations?

Progs should run under *nix, but Windows is OK as well.

TIA

Axel

Re: patching non-text files

2007-09-9, 14:27(+02), Axel Schlicht:
> Hi
> I know how to use diff / patch on text files. BSD also offers bsdiff and
> bspatch for executables.
[...]

Note that I don't think bsdiff has anything to do with BSD. It's
not BSD diff, according to http://www.daemonology.net/bsdiff/,
it used to be called bdiff (binary diff) but was renamed bsdiff
(binary software diff or bytewise substraction diff) to
differenciate it with other programs with the same name.

Have you tried it? bsdiff is not only for executables though it
performs better on executables. Have you tried xdelta?

Those tools should compile easily on any OS.

--
Stéphane

Re: patching non-text files

On Sun, 09 Sep 2007 16:35:31 GMT, Stephane CHAZELAS wrote:

> 2007-09-9, 14:27(+02), Axel Schlicht:
>> Hi
>> I know how to use diff / patch on text files. BSD also offers bsdiff and
>> bspatch for executables.
> [...]
>
> Note that I don't think bsdiff has anything to do with BSD. It's
> not BSD diff, according to http://www.daemonology.net/bsdiff/,
> it used to be called bdiff (binary diff) but was renamed bsdiff
> (binary software diff or bytewise substraction diff) to
> differenciate it with other programs with the same name.
Didn't know that. Think I should give them a try
>
> Have you tried it? bsdiff is not only for executables though it
> performs better on executables. Have you tried xdelta?
Never heard of it. Will go hunting.

Thanks a lot for your answer

Axel Schlicht