The usage of modern tools like composer helps when deploying PHP application nowadays. Sometimes people miss the good old easy way to do things in a way they are used to. One of those things which got harder by using newer tools is patching the source code in external project dependencies. We faced the challenge here at OXID Professional Services team, too and we found an easy and flexible way to have the benefits of both worlds: using composer with its powerful ecosystem and autoloading functionality, and keep the flexibility to patch packages handled by composer located in the vendor directory of your project.