What advantages does el-patch offer compared to patching the source directly via git apply?

[hab25]

I have thought of only these (are there more?):

• allows dynamically patching e.g.

(eval `(el-patch-defun ,@(my-dynamic-computation)))

• requires user-intervention in (far?) fewer situations as it is resillient to e.g. most refactors where a patched definition is moved to another file

• has lower barrier to entry for most users

N.b. the el-patch use-case of just validating that a definition form is as you expect (i.e. without any modifications e.g. el-patch-add) can be done with git apply --check (with a patch that modifies all lines you want to check).

Maybe a discussion about this should be in the README.md; git apply offers an advantage in that it can be used with a much larger variety of software; helping users factor that in when considering using el-patch may be a net positive.

[raxod502]

I mean, you can always fork Emacs core or an installed package. You have just have to maintain a lot more dedication, since you'd have to recompile Emacs core and/or switch package managers so that your packages can be manipulated with Git and/or keep a manual list of all the patches you applied and ensure you re-apply them every time you upgrade something or switch machines.

el-patch is just one point in the tradeoff space.

[hab25]

You have just have to maintain a lot more dedication

Nowadays with declarative build systems like nix or guix the amount of ongoing maintenance for this is much lower than without them (though, they are very complex so barrier to entry is high).

manual list

Why manual? I don't see why it couldn't be scripted together with whatever commands one runs to fetch and/or compile and install Emacs.

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Summarizing your comment: you are detailing and emphasizing something very similar to my "lower barrier to entry for most users" point. Is this summary correct?

If so, are there no other advantages that you have thought of?

PS: To be clear; I do think the three advantages I mentioned are quite significant; thanks for el-patch!

[raxod502]

If you use a package manager like Nix, then yeah, maybe it would be easier to maintain a fork of Emacs and/or various packages. Without that, it's a lot of manual work to make sure everything keeps working. I personally don't really know anything about this because I don't use any of those package managers.

If you have tooling set up to make it trivial to fork the upstream, then of course you can do whatever you want. The point of el-patch is largely so that you don't need to do that.