Patching Algorithms

Some wrapped algorithms require extra fixes inside their code. For permissively licensed algorithms, we use .patch files generated from git format-patch.

To create patch files using git format-patch (assuming your wrapped algorithm is in a git repository):

1. Clone the repository locally.

2. Commit the changes you want to make (with good commit messages and descriptions).

   • Distinct changes should be made in different commits to make patch files easy to read

   • For removing code, we prefer to comment out code instead of removing it, to make potential stacktraces less confusing for end users.

3. Run git format-patch HEAD~[N] where N is the number of commits you made.

To use .patch files in Dockerfiles, we create a fake user for git and apply the patch files using git am:

git config user.email "email@example.com"
git config user.name "Non-existent User"
git am /0001-my-patch.patch