this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2023
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That's how patches used to be 😆
Patches today patch source code. The kind of binary patching you talk about only works with deterministic builds, which sadly there's not enough of out there.
I don't see how that's related at all. Having deterministic builds only matters if you're building a binary from source, if you're working with some distributed binary you'll be applying the patch to identical binaries anyway. And if a new binary is distributed, that's going to be because something in the source was changed; deterministic builds will still give you a different binary if the source changes.
Binary patching is still common, both for getting around DRM and for software updates.
Lemme just say I'm old