How To Apply A Patch to a Drupal Module

Morgan Sully — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 18:54:31 +0000

Sometimes, particularly when using a custom Drupal module, you may need to a apply what's called a 'patch'. A patch is simply a text file with a set of instructions saying which lines of code within a module need to be changed, added or deleted to get the module to function better or more accurately.

Oft times, patches are applied to make sure a module works correctly across Drupal distributions (versions).

Below are instructions for applying a patch. Once you get the hang of it, the whole process can take less than 2 minutes.

Instructions For Applying a Patch to a Drupal Module:

Download the whole folder for a module to your Desktop (off of the server where you have it running)
Create a text file (ending in .patch) using a patch for the respective module (you might have been brought to a webpage with lines of code to be copied and pasted from the pageinto the text file)
Save it and place it in the module's folder
Open up *Terminal
Navigate to the folder (using cd)
Run this command: patch -b < file_name.patch
Upload the whole folder BACK to it's respective location on the server (and overwrite the original folder there)

*Note, this is a command line program for Mac used in conjunction with TextEdit (for editing the text file). Windows equivalents would be MS-DOS and NotePad.

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How To Apply A Patch to a Drupal Module