Is it possible to apply a patch to an external driver before configure checks it?

[JDarnley]

I considered patching a kernel API change in mlx5 but I am not sure if it is possible to apply a patch before configure tries building the driver without the netmap patch.

Are there extra patches I could define somewhere?

Can I skip the check before patching?

[giuseppelettieri]

There is no direct support for this, but you should be able to hook in the mlx5@prepare command, which is run during both builds (with and without the netmap patch). Put a config.mak file in your build directory with something like

mlx5@prepare += ; patch ...

and then run configure as usual