Patent ID: 7840956

Claim:
A method for updating a candidate computer program file in a computer processing device, the method comprising the steps of: loading first and second versions of a first computer program file in the computer processing device, said second version of said first computer program file constituting a revision of said first version of said first computer program file, said first computer program file including a plurality of components which are each respectively assigned a component identifier, wherein components respectively included in both of said first and second versions of said first computer program file share the same component identifier; loading a first version of a second computer program file in the computer processing device, said first version of said second computer program file including a plurality of components which are each respectively assigned a component identifier, wherein components of said first version of said second computer program file which respectively correspond to components of said first version of said first computer program file are assigned the same component identifier as the corresponding component included in said first version of said first computer program file; and generating, in the computer processing device, said candidate computer program file by making reference to the component identifiers of the components included in said first and second versions of said first computer program file and the component identifiers of the components included in said first version of said second computer program file, and updating the components of said first version of said second computer program file to correspond to updated components in said second version of said first computer program file which have the same component identifier as a corresponding component in said first version of said second computer program file.