this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2026
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Is it bad form to patch a dependency? (programming.dev)
submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by staircase@programming.dev to c/programming@programming.dev
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My code depends on a library that makes liberal use of patching (replacing text in source code) for its own dependencies. I feel this is bad form, because, for example, that dependency may now conflict irreconcilably with another dependency of mine.

Am I right in thinking patching code is bad form?

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[–] BB_C@programming.dev 1 points 23 hours ago

Not sure how are you and @kibiz0r@midwest.social coming up with these concerns.

The only correct way to package such software is to vendor dependencies (packaged together or separately). And you can trivially change the sonames of vendored deps in your build scripts so that there are no conflicts whatsoever (I dual-package some stuff against an upstream and a fork and do just that). So dynamic vs. static is not the crux of the issue. The primary concerns are that distributors hate vendoring, irrespective of whether the vendored libs are linked in statically or dynamically. Distributors also hate potentially diverging forks maintained by random downstreams, which is what "patched dependencies" effectively are.

There is always room for some leeway of course, but that would depend on how relevant your software is, and/or whether a maintainer would want to take that burden on.

And finally, sometimes, such dependencies may provide added value that trumps all these concerns. So judging these things is always situational.