A computing system provided according to an aspect of the present invention includes a developer system which sends a set of patches along with metadata in a package. The metadata may include hierarchical paths, with each path indicating a corresponding target (file or archive) which is to be replaced to apply the corresponding patch. A patch tool receives the package and applies the patches using the metadata. According to another aspect of the present invention, a patch tool forms a tree structure based on the hierarchical paths in the metadata. In an embodiment, the tree structure is traversed each time to perform a corresponding patching operation (e.g., backup, and replace). According to yet another aspect of the present invention, only the required archives are unarchived while applying the patches. In an embodiment, the patch tool determines the required archives based on the information in the received metadata.