Applying patches on the Linux systems

Whenever a security vulnerability is found in any software, a security patch is released for the software so that the bug can be fixed. Normally, we use Update Manager, which is built into Linux, to apply security updates. However, for software that is installed by compiling source code, Update Manager may not be as helpful.

For such situations, we can apply the patch file to the original software's source code and then recompile the software.

Getting ready

Since we will use the built-in commands of Linux to create and apply a patch, nothing needs to be done before starting the following steps. We will be creating a sample program in C to understand the process of creating a patch file.

How to do it...

In this section, we will take a look at how to create a patch for a program using the diff command, and then we will apply the patch using the patch command.

1. The first step will be to create a simple C program, called example.c, to print This is an example...