This is my setup for dwm. In src/, the original dwm source is kept. It can be updated through ./pull_upstream.h. Changes to vanilla dwm are kept as individual patches in patch/.

My version updates the status bar internally (status-bar.patch). Here, I keep some stuff like a clock and battery life. This is appended to the regular status message, set through the X root window name, and is updated regularly internally.

Since I use Arch Linux, I keep a PKGBUILD to build and install the package from the local source. install.sh is a small helper that updates the version number if needed, copies all source to a temporary directory, applies the patches in patch/, and finally builds and installs everything.