https://DevOpsCloud.io -- Cloud Monk Losang Jinpa, Ph.D., MCSE/MCT, GitOps DevOps Engineer

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Also called: Patch (computing)

Software Update refers to the process of installing newer versions of software to enhance functionality, fix bugs, and address security vulnerabilities. Updates are essential for maintaining the performance, compatibility, and security of software applications and systems.

• Security Enhancements: Software updates often include patches for known security vulnerabilities. Applying these updates helps protect systems from potential threats, malware, and exploits that target outdated software.
• Bug Fixes: Updates frequently address bugs and issues reported by users. Fixing these bugs improves the stability and functionality of the software, reducing the likelihood of crashes and unexpected behavior.
• New Features: Software updates can introduce new features and enhancements that provide users with additional capabilities or improved performance. This helps keep software relevant and competitive in the market.

• Patches: Small updates designed to fix specific issues or vulnerabilities. Patches are typically released quickly to address urgent problems and may be applied independently of major software releases.
• Minor Updates: These updates include improvements, minor bug fixes, and incremental changes that enhance functionality without significantly altering the software. Minor updates often follow a version numbering scheme (e.g., from 1.1 to 1.2).
• Major Releases: Significant updates that include new features, substantial changes, or architectural modifications. Major releases typically come with a new version number (e.g., from 2.0 to 3.0) and may require more extensive testing and deployment.

• Regular Updates: Regularly apply updates to ensure that software remains secure and functional. Enable automatic updates when possible to streamline the update process and reduce the risk of missing critical updates.
• Backup and Testing: Before applying major updates, back up important data and test the update in a staging environment. This helps prevent data loss and ensures compatibility with existing systems.
• Monitoring and Documentation: Monitor the performance and stability of software after updates and document any issues encountered. This helps track the impact of updates and facilitates troubleshooting if problems arise.

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_update
• https://www.techradar.com/how-to/how-to-update-your-software
• https://www.cio.com/article/244565/what-is-software-updating-and-patching.html

Snippet from Wikipedia: Patch (computing)

A patch is data that is intended to be used to modify an existing software resource such as a program or a file, often to fix bugs and security vulnerabilities. A patch may be created to improve functionality, usability, or performance. A patch is typically provided by a vendor for updating the software that they provide. A patch may be created manually, but commonly it is created via a tool that compares two versions of the resource and generates data that can be used to transform one to the other.

Typically, a patch needs to be applied to the specific version of the resource it is intended to modify, although there are exceptions. Some patching tools can detect the version of the existing resource and apply the appropriate patch, even if it supports multiple versions. As more patches are released, their cumulative size can grow significantly, sometimes exceeding the size of the resource itself. To manage this, the number of supported versions may be limited, or a complete copy of the resource might be provided instead.

Patching allows for modifying a compiled (machine language) program when the source code is unavailable. This demands a thorough understanding of the inner workings of the compiled code, which is challenging without access to the source code. Patching also allows for making changes to a program without rebuilding it from source. For small changes, it can be more economical to distribute a patch than to distribute the complete resource.

Although often intended to fix problems, a poorly designed patch can introduce new problems (see software regressions). In some cases updates may knowingly break the functionality or disable a device, for instance, by removing components for which the update provider is no longer licensed. Patch management is a part of lifecycle management, and is the process of using a strategy and plan of what patches should be applied to which systems at a specified time. Typically, a patch is applied via programmed control to computer storage so that it is permanent. In some cases a patch is applied by a programmer via a tool such as a debugger to computer memory in which case the change is lost when the resource is reloaded from storage.

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