How to patch modules with CPAN patch releases

Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hello all,

I am trying to build Net::Pcap on Win32, I have followed a thread previously written on this site and ended up at :

https://rt.cpan.org/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=53292#txn-912966

Problem is, being moderately stupid, I don't know how to patch what needs to be patched. I have strawberry Perl 5.14.2 and the 'patch' program appears to be included.

The only time I have patched previously, was with 'patch -np1' on Linux boxes, but that doesn't appear to work.

I seemingly had a little success with pathc -p0 < patchname.patch for one of the patches and then it all went destined for the u-bend.

Any help would be graciously received.

Many thanks !

Comment on How to patch modules with CPAN patch releases

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Re: How to patch modules with CPAN patch releases by moritz (Cardinal) on May 27, 2012 at 13:48 UTC
Point one: patch wants to reach its patches from standard input by default, not from a file you give it on the command line. Point two: the patch files themselves contain the paths of the files to be patched: `diff --git a/Makefile.PL b/Makefile.PL index 26ab13e..b966faa 100644 --- a/Makefile.PL # original file name +++ b/Makefile.PL # name of modified file` [download] (comments added by me). The filnames are `a/Makefile.PL` and `b/Makefile.PL`. But if your `Makefile.PL` is in the current directory, you need to tell patch to strip the `a/` and `b/` prefix. That's just one directory level each, so you need the `-p1` option. In summary, in the directory that contains the code, to have `patch` modify the files in-place, run: `patch -p1 < file-with-the-patches.diff` [download] Perl 6 - the future is here, just unevenly distributed	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: How to patch modules with CPAN patch releases by Anonymous Monk on May 27, 2012 at 14:03 UTC
Thanks folks for taking the time out of your day to answer my question. I have noted your answers, (--dry-run will forever remain in my brain ;) but, sadly I am still getting error(s) : With # patch -p1 < patchname.patch patching file Makefile.PL Assertion failed: hunk, file .\src\patch\2.5.9\patch-2.5.9-src\patch.c, line 354 This application has requested the Runtime to terminate it in an unusual way. Please contact the application's support team for more information. I am not sure how to proceed...	[reply]
Re^3: How to patch modules with CPAN patch releases by moritz (Cardinal) on May 27, 2012 at 14:26 UTC
Then I guess your patch program is broken. I have never managed to make patch abort with such an error. Perl 6 - the future is here, just unevenly distributed	[reply]
Re^4: How to patch modules with CPAN patch releases by Anonymous Monk on May 27, 2012 at 17:55 UTC
Re: How to patch modules with CPAN patch releases by tobyink (Canon) on May 27, 2012 at 13:21 UTC
Personally I can never figure out the correct `-p0`, `-p1`, `-p2` incantation to get `patch` to work correctly. Yes, I understand what the `-pn` options do, but I always end up getting the wrong number because of fencepost errors. My general technique is to try `-p0`, `-p1`, `-p2`, etc in conjunction with the `--dry-run` option until something looks like it's worked, then re-do without `--dry-run`. `perl -E'sub Monkey::do{say$_,for@_,do{($monkey=[caller(0)]->[3])=~s{::}{ }and$monkey}}"Monkey say"->Monkey::do'`	[reply]
Re: How to patch modules with CPAN patch releases by Anonymous Monk on May 28, 2012 at 00:44 UTC
probably need to run dos2unix or unix2dos on the patch file before applying	[reply]