The difference between a set of changes and a patch?

Question

What is the difference in a set of changes and a patch?

I used hg today, and I noticed that the import command mentions that it is used to "import an ordered set of fixes."

What is a patch?

Answer 1

Changes usually relate to the internal representation. Thus, hg unbundle , which processes mercury-specific files, "applies one or more group change files." A change group is simply a group of change sets.

Patches are plain text in standard formats (for example, created by diff ). Note that the patch command can be used to process these plaintext files (regardless of version control).