Versioning when binary AND text files are involved?

I have a project where I need to maintain changes to both the text and binary files. I have a couple of options:

1. Use patches
2. Use a versioning system like git or hg.

For my purposes, patches are a better option if it was only text files. However, since there are images that might be replaced/added/deleted, which is the best way to go?

Is there a clean diff/patch utility that can take care of binary differences as well (without me having to specify it is binary -- I should be able to diff开发者_如何学Go the entire directory and not individual files, which I can't with bash's diff in binary mode) and use them as patches? If not, which versioning system is a cleaner option when it comes to binary files?

Mercurial has the notion of patch queue (with the mq extension enabled), largely inspired by quilt.
This allows you to manage your patches in several ways:

• Use a single patch queue and have all your patch order sequentially in it
• Use several patch queues, with the qqueue command, and have patches grouped by whatever criteria fits you.

As a bonus, as patches queues are really patch files, you can easily change their order and even move/copy them from one queue to another (have a look in your .hg directory to find the patch queues).

You can find a lot more of usefull information about managing patch queues at Steve Losh's tutorial on mercurial queue.

Both Git and Mercurial can easily handle both text and binary files. Use whichever you prefer. And yes, a VCS is the right choice.

If you don't like a VCS as such, try using a ftp server containing patches. Version numbers can be used as directory names. This system can be backed with a script, which applies patches sequentially based on directory names.

In the project I'm working on, database patches are applied in this manner. However, they are maintained inside a VCS. A file can be used to maintain the current version, which will be read by the script to decide which patch to apply.