open-vcdiff is an encoder and decoder for the VCDIFF format, as described in RFC 3284 : The VCDIFF Generic Differencing and Compression Data Format (http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3284.txt) A library with a simple API is included, as well as a command-line executable that can apply the encoder and decoder to source, target, and delta files. For further details, please refer to: http://code.google.com/p/open-vcdiff/wiki/HowToUseOpenVcdiff See INSTALL for (generic) installation instructions for C++: basically ./configure && make && make install This should compile the unit tests as well as "vcdiff", a simple command-line utility to run the encoder and decoder. Typical usage of vcdiff is as follows (the "<" and ">" are file redirect operations, not optional arguments): vcdiff encode -dictionary file.dict < target_file > delta_file vcdiff decode -dictionary file.dict < delta_file > target_file To see the command-line syntax of vcdiff, use "vcdiff --help" or just "vcdiff". To call the encoder from C++ code, assuming that dictionary, target, and delta are all std::string objects: #include <google/vcencoder.h> // Read this file for interface details [...] open_vcdiff::VCDiffEncoder encoder(dictionary.data(), dictionary.size()); encoder.SetFormatFlags(open_vcdiff::VCD_FORMAT_INTERLEAVED); encoder.Encode(target.data(), target.size(), &delta); Calling the decoder is just as simple: #include <google/vcdecoder.h> // Read this file for interface details [...] open_vcdiff::VCDiffDecoder decoder; decoder.Decode(dictionary.data(), dictionary.size(), delta, &target); When using the encoder, the C++ application must be linked with the library options -lvcdcom and -lvcdenc; when using the decoder, it must be linked with -lvcdcom and -lvcddec. To verify that the package works on your system, especially after making modifications to the source code, please run the unit tests using make check For further details, please refer to: http://code.google.com/p/open-vcdiff/wiki/HowToUseOpenVcdiff