# Patch maintenance policy

Drupal core and contributed project code sometimes needs patching to fix specific issues. The policy outlines how we deal with patches and maintain them in a variety of situations.

# 1.0 Where patches are defined

We currently aim to include patches in the module, project or theme that requires the project to be patched.

For example, the locacalgov profile requires drupal/core (Drupal core) (opens new window):

So patches for drupal/core live in the localgov profile's composer.json (opens new window).

# 2.0 Applying patches

We crrently use the composer-patches plugin to manage patches with composer. See https://github.com/cweagans/composer-patches (opens new window)

This supports nesting of patches in composer.json files of projects that we require from the main composer.json file or our project.

This may change.

# 3.0 Testing patches

To test a pull request with changes to patches, we sometimes need to run a composer require with an alias, to require a dev branch while pretending to composer we are on a recent tagged release.

For example, here's a historical change to a patch in the localgov profile (opens new window).

This is a merge request from the 'fix/redirect-1.10-patch' branch.

To test this branch, from the composer root of our LocalGov Drupal project, we can run.

composer require "localgovdrupal/localgov:dev-fix/redirect-1.10-patch as 3.0.10" -W

This will fetch the fix/redirect-1.10-patch branch but alias it as 3.0.10, the current latest release of the localgov profile.

# 4.0 Patching major versions of Drupal core

Sometimes we have a patch required for one version of Drupal that is not needed for a more recent version.

In this case, we aim to maintain the patch for currently supported versions of Drupal core and use patches-ignore in our composer root composer.json.

For example, the 2.1.3 release of localgov/localgov_services includes a patch (opens new window) for Drupal core.

"patches": {
    "drupal/core": {
        "node_access filters out accessible nodes when node is left joined (1349080)": "https://git.drupalcode.org/project/drupal/-/commit/c271adb.diff"
    }
}

This is needed for Druapl 9, but not needed for Drupal 10. However localgov_services still supports both Drupal 9 and 10.

To work around this, we keep the patch in localgov_services for now, and tell composer to ignore it in our root composer.json like this:

"patches-ignore": {
    "localgovdrupal/localgov_services": {
        "drupal/core": {
            "node_access filters out accessible nodes when node is left joined (1349080)" : "https://git.drupalcode.org/project/drupal/-/commit/c271adb.diff"
        }
    }
},

See https://github.com/localgovdrupal/localgov_project/blob/3.1.1/composer.json#L71-L77 (opens new window)

It is important to note that the localgovdrupal/localgov_project composer file is meant as both a starting point and a reference for ongoing LocalGov Drupal codebases. Most people will use this as a starting point and evolve and maintain their own root composer.json file as the project evolves.

As far as we know, patches-ignore only works in the root composer.json file.

← Technical Group - Overview