Node:Tips for Patch Consumers, Next:Avoiding Common Mistakes, Previous:Tips for Patch Producers, Up:Making Patches
A patch producer should tell recipients how to apply the patches, so the first rule of thumb for a patch consumer is to follow the instructions supplied with the patch.
GNU diff can analyze files with arbitrarily long lines
and files that end in incomplete lines. However, older versions of
patch cannot patch such files. If you are having trouble
applying such patches, try upgrading to a recent version of GNU
patch.