Add daily email for 2025-01-13

Easy customisation using patches

source/_daily_emails/2025-01-13.md

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+---
+title: Easy customisation using patches
+date: 2025-01-13
+permalink: daily/2025/01/13/patches
+tags:
+  - software-development
+  - nix
+snippet: |
+  I haven't written a patch file for a while, but I did this week to customise a script I use on my computer and to make everything more maintainable.
+---
+
+I'm a long-time Vim and tmux user.
+
+I used them before [I switched to using Neovim full time][0] in July 2021.
+
+More recently, I've used a script that creates and attaches to tmux sessions based on the directories in my Code directory, making it easy to switch between projects.
+
+It was based on others by [Jess Archer][1] and ThePrimeagen, although Prime recently created a new version of his as its own project, so I decided to switch to his version.
+
+But there was one issue - the paths to search for directory names is hard-coded and don't match mine.
+
+I started by duplicating his and changing the paths, but that would mean missing any future updates and having to maintain my version separately.
+
+Until I realised I could use his version and apply patches to it for my changes and customisations.
+
+This is something I'm familiar with from my Drupal contributions, as we used to attach patch files to issues before moving to GitLab and merge requests.
+
+I was able to make my changes and easily [apply the patch easily as part of my Nix derivation][2].
+
+This means I'll get any future updates to the script, keep my changes and Nix will automatically apply my patch whenever I rebuild my system.
+
+I really like this approach, as I'm no longer duplicating the script and don't have the maintenance overhead whilst still making any customisations I need.
+
+In fact, there are Linux applications such as dwm, dmenu and st (a simple terminal), all written by suckless.org, that use this approach as the main method of configuration and customisation.
+
+They release the core package and people write and contribute patch files to customise it as they need.
+
+Although patches are no longer used on Drupal.org, they're still a great way to customise and contribute to open source software.
+
+[0]: {{site.url}}/blog/going-full-vim
+[1]: {{site.url}}/podcast/25-jess-archer-drush-laravel-prompts
+[2]: https://code.oliverdavies.uk/opdavies/dotfiles/commit/5fd27efa502bd48eb7d897acec8aa3344bef2247