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?


Is this for a personal project or something to be distributed?
If this is a distributed project where reproducibility is important, modifying external dependencies will quickly and greatly complicate things. I think a preferred method would be forking if not doing a pull request, assuming those dependencies are open source. This way you can independently develop on the dependency and source it separately instead of relying on patches