[gentoo-user] Applying patches without needing overlays and modifying ebuilds

[Nikos Chantziaras]

Does anyone think that a mechanism of applying patches to a package 
without the need to modify the ebuild of that package would be a useful 
feature?  There are cases of useful patches that are not accepted by the 
maintainers of the ebuild (because they have not been accepted upstream 
or other reasons), forcing users to copy ebuilds in their overlay and 
modifying the ebuild there.  This turns out to be a hassle every time 
the package receives an update.

What if we could just specify patches to be applied in, say, 
/etc/portage/packages.patch with something like:

   media-video/smplayer j-random-hack.patch

and portage would apply that patch automatically?  That way, the hassle 
of updating the ebuild of a package in which I use custom patches would 
go away.  The patches could be searched for in a designated directory, 
in this example maybe /var/portage/patches/media-video/smplayer (or 
something else entirely.)

Can someone think of a way to set up something like this?