Add daily email for 2025-02-24

To patch or not to patch

source/_daily_emails/2025-02-24.md

@@ -0,0 +1,31 @@
+---
+title: To patch or not to patch
+date: 2025-02-24
+permalink: daily/2025/02/24/patch
+tags:
+  - software-development
+cta: ~
+snippet: |
+  To patch or not to patch.
+---
+
+[Applying patch files][0] is a common way to customise and extend open source software, and how we used to submit changes to Drupal before issue forks and merge requests were added to Drupal.org.
+
+Some software, such as dwm and st from suckless.org are released as minimal versions that you patch to add features to.
+
+If you find a line of code that you want to add, edit or delete, a patch file describes the changes so you can re-apply them whenever the source file changes.
+
+Patching offers unlimited customisation and flexibility.
+
+Whatever changes you want to make, you can.
+
+The downside is you need to maintain any patches you've written.
+
+If a change is made that causes your patch to no longer apply, you'll need to update the patch.
+
+There are some patches I commonly apply to Drupal projects, but I'll try to either contribute the changes back to the Drupal so I no longer need the patch or make the change in a custom module.
+
+Sometimes, though, [patching is the only option][1].
+
+[0]: {{site.url}}/daily/2025/01/13/patches
+[1]: {{site.url}}/daily/2025/01/14/patching-drupal