Embodiments of the disclosure disclose a method and apparatus for generating a patch file. A specific embodiment of the method comprises: acquiring a first target file for establishing a target process, the first target file comprising a first symbol table; acquiring a second target file compiled based on a target source code file, the second target file comprising a second symbol table; determining a difference symbol between the first target file and the second target file using the first symbol table and the second symbol table; and generating a patch file based on the difference symbol. The embodiment has enriched the way to generate a patch file.