symplify/vendor-patches

Generate vendor patches for packages with single command

12.1.1 2026-05-27 04:11 UTC

Requires

• php: >=7.2
• cweagans/composer-patches: ^1.7.3 || ^2.0

MIT

README

Generate vendor patches for packages with single command.

Install

composer require symplify/vendor-patches --dev

# If you are applying patches to production, be sure to also explicitly add cweagans/composer-patches.
composer require cweagans/composer-patches

Usage

How to create a patch for a file in /vendor?

1. Create a Copy of /vendor file you Want To Change with *.old Suffix

For example, if you edit:

vendor/nette/di/src/DI/Extensions/InjectExtension.php
# copy of the file
vendor/nette/di/src/DI/Extensions/InjectExtension.php.old

2. Open the original file and change the lines you need:

 			if (DI\Helpers::parseAnnotation($rp, 'inject') !== null) {
-				if ($type = DI\Helpers::parseAnnotation($rp, 'var')) {
+				if ($type = \App\Reflection\Helper\StaticReflectionHelper::getPropertyType($rp)) {
+				} elseif ($type = DI\Helpers::parseAnnotation($rp, 'var')) {
 					$type = Reflection::expandClassName($type, Reflection::getPropertyDeclaringClass($rp));

Only *.php file is loaded, not the *.php.old one. This way you can be sure the new code is working before you generate patches.

Make sure to back up other modified files in the vendor/ directory as well as some of the commands below may overwrite them.

3. Run generate command 🥳️

vendor/bin/vendor-patches generate

This tool will generate patch files for all files created this way in /patches directory:

/patches/nette-di-di-extensions-injectextension.php.patch

The patch path is based on original file path, so the patch name is always unique.

Also, it will add configuration for cweagans/composer-patches to your composer.json:

{
    "extra": {
        "patches": {
            "nette/di": [
                "patches/nette_di_di_extensions_injectextension.patch"
            ]
        }
    }
}

3.1 When using cweagans/composer-patches v2

cweagans/composer-patches v2 requires the execution of 2 additional steps after generating the patches:

Updating the patches.lock.json file:

composer patches-relock

Applying the new patches:

composer patches-repatch

4. Final steps

Now you need to do run composer to update the lock file as the checksum of composer.json has changed:

composer update --lock

That's it!

Now all you need to do is run composer:

composer install

And your patches are applied to your code!

If not, get more information from composer to find out why:

composer install --verbose

Summary

To summarize, the generate workflow is:

# generate patches
vendor/bin/vendor-patches generate
# (if using cweagans/composer-patches v2)
composer patches-relock
composer patches-repatch
# update the lock file
composer update --lock
# install with patches applied
composer install

Patches File and Patches Folder Options

Optionally, if you use a patches file you can specify its path using the --patches-file option:

vendor/bin/vendor-patches generate --patches-file=patches.json

You can choose to write the patches to a different folder than the default 'patches' folder by specifying the folder name using the --patches-output option:

vendor/bin/vendor-patches generate --patches-output=patches-composer

Resolve From Directory Option

By default, the package name is read from each package's composer.json name field. Use --resolve-from-directory to derive the package name from its vendor/<vendor>/<package> directory instead. Useful for private repositories where the installed directory name differs from the name in composer.json.

vendor/bin/vendor-patches generate --resolve-from-directory

TroubleShooting

Upgrading from older versions of cweagans/composer-patches (pre 2.0.0)

If you are upgrading cweagans/composer-patches to 2.0.0 and newer versions, you may need to adjust your patches to ensure compatibility.

The new version requires that --- /dev/null needs to be replaced with --- <file-path> in your patch files.

For example, if you have an old patch file that starts with:

--- /dev/null
+++ ../src/SomeFile.php
@@ -0,0 +1,10 @@
+<?php
+// some code

You need to change it to:

--- ../src/SomeFile.php
+++ ../src/SomeFile.php
@@ -0,0 +1,10 @@
+<?php
+// some code

macOS

If you are on macOS, and got hang on applying patch, you may need to install gpatch, you can install with:

brew install gpatch

and register to .bash_profile or .zshrc (if you're using oh-my-zsh):

PATH="/opt/homebrew/opt/gpatch/libexec/gnubin:$PATH"