Patent ID: 7870547

Claim:
A method for managing deployment of a software patch, comprising: creating a temporary software patch comprising at least one file that represents software code to change a state of files or settings of an end user system, the temporary software patch known to be a patch in the presence of which other software patches are not to be installed without uninstalling the temporary software patch; associating information with the temporary software patch that: i) indicates that after the temporary software patch is installed, the state of the files or settings of the end-user system is an unknown state and the temporary software patch should not be installed over, and ii) prevents the software patches from being installed over the temporary software patch from the unknown state; enabling the state of the files or settings of the end-user system to return from the unknown state to a prior known state, which is a state of the files or settings of the end-user system before the temporary software patch was installed, to enable the software patches to be installed from the prior known state; and based on the state indicated by the information associated with the temporary software patch, determining whether the software patches can be installed over the temporary software patch to manage deployment of the temporary software patch.