"patch" should be included as a strict requirement in documentation

[dithwick]

Hi,

I'm thinking that "patch" should be included as one of the "strict" requirements in the documentation (https://easybuild.readthedocs.io/en/latest/Installation.html#requirements) since any package requiring a patch won't build without it.

Thanks

[migueldiascosta]

another option would be to include a pure python implementation of patch with easybuild (#20 (comment))

not sure if it's the same project or not, but there's https://pypi.org/project/patch/

[boegel]

That would be a pretty big change, I don't think that would be worth the effort...

If relying on patch (and make, there's a couple more) in the OS is problematic, we could add tools like this into the toolchain, but somehow make sure they're always only build dependencies...

[dithwick]

I'm not sure that relying on patch in the OS IS that problematic on the whole and it's still my preferred option over a python patch module.