# mendsley/bsdiff

bsdiff and bspatch are libraries for building and applying patches to binary files.

Repository: https://github.com/mendsley/bsdiff
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/bsdiff
Language: C
License: NOASSERTION
License Family: other
Last push: 2023-09-06T15:07:46+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 32/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-02T17:46:02.011165+00:00)
- activity 0, release rhythm 35, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 5324, "days_push": 1092, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: no_releases, no_license
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 2130, forks 368 (observed 2026-08-28T04:06:17.152790+00:00)

## What it is
A C library fork of Colin Percival's bsdiff/bspatch for building and applying binary file patches, redesigned to be dependency-free and easily embeddable. It was motivated by game patching needs and supports streaming without disk I/O or seeks.

## Use cases
- generate binary patches between file versions
- apply patches to update game assets without full downloads
- embed delta update functionality in a C/C++ application
- patch files on embedded or streaming-only systems
- build a self-updating desktop application

## When to choose
- you need an embeddable, dependency-free binary diff library in C
- you must apply patches without disk I/O or seek operations
- you target multiple platforms including Windows, Linux, and macOS

## When to avoid
- you need patches compatible with the original bsdiff tool
- you want a maintained, actively developed project
- you need a high-level language binding out of the box

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: maintenance
- function: compression, file-system, cli
- domain: developer-tools, files, cross-platform
- platform: cpp, c, cross-platform, cli
- tags: binary-diff, patching, delta-encoding, embeddable, game-patching

## Member repositories
- mendsley/bsdiff (main) score 32

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:06:17.152790+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T02:52:22.108338+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/mendsley/bsdiff (fetched 2026-08-28T04:06:17.152790+00:00, sha 3971ac9d7a7d)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.