easyPatch 1.0b1 review

easyPatch is a quick & simple patch maker for applications and projects.

License: Freeware OS: Mac OS X File size: 260K Developer: Julifos Price: $0.00 Updated: 31 Mar 2006

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easyPatch is a quick & simple patch maker for applications and projects. Obviously, it is not as powerful as VISE or Aladdin products, but it's a great tool for most of applications.

Drop both "Oldest project" and "Newest project" onto its correct location, choose your output format and click "Go!".

Here are some key features of "easyPatch":
You can compare two application bundles and easyPatch will find any different documents in the newest project.
easyPatch will work only in data-fork files (eg, those contained in any cocoa application).
After comparison, easyPatch can build a "standalone updater", an application able to update the "oldest project" to match the new one. Its size will be 80Kb (20Kb compressed) for the executable, plus any file needed for the update process). This means that generated updaters are as ligth as possible, cool for internet transmissions.
Maybe you prefer distribute a 300Kb updater instead of the entire app (eg, 3MB) when there are changes in a few files, or give your user such possibility.
Specially thought for applescript-studio applications, you can choose "AS-Studio webupdate" as the output format. This will generate a "tgz" file named "year+month+day", containing any modified files based in your new project.
Then, you should place this file in your server and your application (in your users' computer) can auto-update itself withouth the need to go-to-website, download-new-files, uncompress-new-files, install-new-files. Also called "live update".
You can't compare a single file, but a package app. And you can compare two folders, which means that you can update not only the app itself, but also any of your project's files, including documentation, samples or whatever.