diff --git a/source/_daily_emails/2025-01-14.md b/source/_daily_emails/2025-01-14.md new file mode 100644 index 00000000..23854947 --- /dev/null +++ b/source/_daily_emails/2025-01-14.md @@ -0,0 +1,45 @@ +--- +title: Patching Drupal +date: 2025-01-14 +permalink: daily/2025/01/14/patching-drupal +tags: + - software-development + - drupal +cta: ~ +snippet: | + Although patches aren't used to contribute to Drupal any more, you can still apply patches to Drupal code in your own projects. +--- + +Yesterday I wrote about [how I used a patch file to customise a project in my Nix configuration][0]. + +I'm familiar with patch files from my Drupal contributions, when we used to create and upload patch files and attach them to issues to contribute changes. + +Although patches aren't used to contribute to Drupal any more, you can still apply patches to Drupal code in your own projects if you need to. + +If there's a customisation or fix you need you need to apply, instead of altering and "hacking" the source files, you can apply changes with patch files. + +Instead of Nix, I use [composer-patches][1] to automatically apply patches when running `composer install`. + +For example, in my composer.json file, I can add something like this: + +```json +"extra": { + "patches": { + "drupal/default_content": { + "Issue #2698425: Do not reimport existing entities (https://www.drupal.org/project/default_content/issues/2698425#comment-15593214)": "patches/default_content-2698425-do-not-reimport-196.patch", + "Issue #3160146: Add a Normalizer and Denormalizer to support Layout Builder (https://www.drupal.org/project/default_content/issues/3160146#comment-14814050)": "patches/default_content-3160146-53.patch" + } + }, +}, +``` + +This will apply these two patch files to the Default Content module (which are the same as running `git diff` between two commits), which I needed to do for a recent project. + +If the upstream issue is fixed and the patch is no longer needed, they can be removed and the module can be updated to the latest version. + +And this works for core and contrib projects. + +The same as the tmux-sessionizer example, this approach means I can apply any changes without needing to duplicate or alter the code, and it makes it easy to contribute by testing other people's patches or applying and contributing your own. + +[0]: {{site.url}}/daily/2025/01/13/patches +[1]: https://github.com/cweagans/composer-patches