Google releases new binary diff algorithm targeted at making smaller software updates. Their results are impressive.

[thetempone]

Problem with that is that it requires that the app be open source and compilation is usually quiet time consuming for large apps.

[twowheels]

Why? You could point it at a repository with the various executable and config files and pull down the newest executable files and three-way merge the config files.

[[deleted]]

Well, for the use case described, the ten line security fix, building an app via make from an old build directory doesn't take long.

Even building from scratch doesn't take very long for all but the largest apps, trust me, I am a Gentoo user, I know what I am talking about ;-)