4.5. Update the Ethereal sources

After you obtained the Ethereal sources for the first time, you might want to keep them in sync with the sources at the Subversion repository.

4.5.1. ... with Anonymous Subversion access

After the first time checkout is done, updating your sources is simply done by typing (in the Ethereal source dir):

$ svn update

This will only take a few seconds, even on a slow internet line. It will replace old file versions by new ones. If you and someone else have changed the same file since the last update, Subversion will try to merge the changes into your private file (this is working remarkably well).

4.5.2. ... from zip files

Independant of the way you retrieve the zip file of the Ethereal sources (as Section 4.4, “Obtain the Ethereal sources” is providing several ways), the way to bring the changes from the official sources into your personal source tree is identical.

First of all, you will download the new zip file of the official sources the way you did it the first time.

If you didn't changed anything in the sources, you could simply throw away your old sources and reinstall everything just like the first time. But be sure, that you really didn't changed anything. It might be a good idea to simply rename the "old" dir to have it around, just in case you remember later that you really did changed something before.

Well, if you did change something in your source tree, you have to merge the official changes since the last update into your source tree. You will install the content of the zip file into a new directory and use a good merge tool (e.g. http://winmerge.sourceforge.net/ for Win32) to bring your personal source tree in sync with the official sources again.