Crate ina

Binary diffing and patching designed for executables.

This crate provides simple interfaces for creating binary deltas between arbitrary blobs and applying them to reconstruct the original blob. It is especially well-suited for executable files, i.e., it is designed to produce small deltas specifically for executables.

Examples

Creating a patch file between two executable versions:

use std::fs::{self, File};

let mut old = fs::read("app-v1.exe")?;
// Ensure the last byte is a 0
old.push(0);
let new = fs::read("app-v2.exe")?;
let mut patch = File::create("app-v1-to-v2.ina")?;

ina::diff(&old, &new, &mut patch)?;

Applying a patch file to create an updated executable:

use std::{io, fs::File};

let old = File::open("app-v1.exe")?;
let patch = File::open("app-v1-to-v2.ina")?;
let mut new = File::create("app-v2.exe")?;

ina::patch(old, patch, &mut new)?;

Structs

DiffConfig

Configuration for a diff operation.

PatchMetadata

Metadata of a patch file.

PatchVersion

Version of a patch file format.

Patcher

A patcher that reconstructs a new blob from an old blob and a patch

Enums

PatchError

An error indicating that patching a blob failed.

Functions

diff

Constructs a patch between two blobs with default options

diff_with_config

Constructs a patch between two blobs

patch

Reconstructs a new blob from an old blob and a patch

read_header

Reads the header of patch to extract its metadata.