CLI tooling for patching external dependencies

[jgao54]

Description of the feature request:

Similar to PNPM’s built-in pnpm patch command, it would be awesome to have the CLI tooling to support patching bazel's external dependencies.

API:
bazel patch: create a copy of the external dependency for edits
bazel patch-commit: apply the patch to the dependency
bazel patch-remove: remove the patch to the dependency

Which category does this issue belong to?

External Dependency

What underlying problem are you trying to solve with this feature?

Make a better user experience for patching external dependencies.

Which operating system are you running Bazel on?

No response

What is the output of bazel info release?

No response

If bazel info release returns development version or (@non-git), tell us how you built Bazel.

No response

What's the output of git remote get-url origin; git rev-parse HEAD ?

No response

Have you found anything relevant by searching the web?

No response

Any other information, logs, or outputs that you want to share?

No response

[meteorcloudy]

The MODULE.bazel file will be the source of truth for external dependencies in Bazel. It's highly unlikely we'll work on some features like this.

[fmeum]

I would say this would be very useful to have, but could very well be a separate tool built on buildozer and interacting with the BCR directly. There really isn't much benefit to building this into Bazel.

[meteorcloudy]

Yeah, it'll be nice to have some toolings to prepare patch files that can be used in BCR or MODULE.bazel, and I agree it shouldn't be part of Bazel.

@jgao54 Feel free to open an issue to https://github.com/bazelbuild/buildtools