No Stupid Questions (Developer Edition)

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How do people make patches for closed source software from outside its software company/devs? (lemm.ee)

submitted 8 months ago by ALostInquirer@lemm.ee to c/no_stupid_questions@programming.dev

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You see this with some apps (I think ReVanced is a popular example?) and games occasionally, and I've never been clear on how they do it.

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[–] Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Software is just a file, you can make a patch for any file.

You compare the new version to the old version to get a patch file (i.e. a representation of just what changed), then you use that information to change the old file to the new file.

Edit: I realize now you're talking more about unofficial patches. Decompilers, debuggers, maybe replacing dynamically linked functions, and a lot of patience.