GNU patch version 2.7 released

I am pleased to announce that version 2.7 of GNU patch has been released. The following significant changes have happened since the last stable release in December 2009:

* Support for most features of the "diff --git" format, including renames and
  copies, permission changes, and symlink diffs.  Binary diffs are not
  supported yet; patch will complain and skip them.

* Support for double-quoted filenames: when a filename starts with a double
  quote, it is interpreted as a C string literal.  The escape sequences \\, \",
  \a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t, \v, and \ooo (a three-digit octal number between 0 and
  255) are recognized.

* Ignore destination file names that are absolute or that contain a component
  of "..".  This addresses CVE-2010-4651.

* Refuse to apply a normal patch to a symlink.  (Previous versions of patch
  were replacing the symlink with a regular file.)

* When trying to modify a read-only file, warn about the potential problem
  by default.  The --read-only command line option allows to change this
  behavior.

* Files to be deleted are deleted once the entire input has been processed, not
  immediately.  This fixes a bug with numbered backup files.

* When a timestamp specifies a time zone, honor that instead of assuming the
  local time zone (--set-date) or Universal Coordinated Time (--set-utc).

* Support for nanosecond precision timestamps.

* Patch no longer gets a failed assertion for certain mangled patches.

* Many portability and bug fixes.

Release tarballs are available at:

  ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/patch/

Please report bugs or suggestions on the <bug-patch@gnu.org> mailing list, or in the project's bug tracker on Savannah:

  http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/patch

Thanks, Andreas