Relatively few things need to actually be baked into the kernel. Most features in the kernel codebase can be built as a module at will, especially drivers. But

Relatively few things need to actually be baked into the kernel. Most features in the kernel codebase can be built as a module at will, especially drivers. But it's the codebase that you patch, so "patching the kernel" doesn't mean the OP ruled out building it as a module in the end. Even though they may well be able to just build it against kernel headers and even load it at runtime.