I've been using Gentoo for almost twenty years! Patching libraries is easier than any other distro. Just throw the patch in /etc/portage/patches/${package

I've been using Gentoo for almost twenty years! Patching libraries is easier than any other distro. Just throw the patch in /etc/portage/patches/${package}/${name}/ ...run one emerge command, and your entire system is now linked to the patched library. For example one of my machines has: /etc/portage/patches/media-libs/svt-av1/0001-Address-build-warnings-and-CI-failures-from-enabling.patch ...which is a backport to fix a build error with avx512 enabled. Same for debugging and cflags, I simply have: {0}[calvinow@sousa ~] cat /etc/portage/env/debug-cflags FEATURES="${FEATURES} nostrip" COMMON_FLAGS="-Og -ggdb3 -fno-omit-frame-pointer -pipe" ... ...and then rebuilding any package with debug cflags is one vim+emerge away: {0}[calvinow@sousa ~] cat /etc/portage/package.env/20debug media-libs/x264 debug-cflags media-libs/x265 debug-cflags media-video/ffmpeg debug-cflags