Drupal - How to Patch a Module

This tutorial describes how to patch a module on your live Drupal site with the code changes you have made on your Drupal development site. If you already have a patch file that needs to be applied to a module, read this article instead: Apply a Patch to a Drupal Module

Otherwise, let us venture forth in quest of more libations!

Create the Patch

# cd ~
# diff -ruN /var/www/my_drupal_site/sites/all/modules/custom/my_module/ /var/www_dev/my_drupal_site/sites/all/modules/custom/my_module > my_module.patch

Backup Module Before Patching

# cp -r /var/www/my_drupal_site/sites/all/modules/custom/my_module my_module.backup

Try a Dry Run of the Patch

Now let's do a dry run of the patch on the live server to see if it looks OK before actually patching the module:

patch --dry-run --verbose -p0 < my_module.patch

If the dry run output looks OK, let's run it for real:

Patch the Module

patch -p0 < my_module.patch

Now get out there and patch some modules!

Here's another article I wrote about practically the same thing, sometimes I forget stuff, my brain drive only has so much space:

Create and Apply a Patch to a Drupal Module