[jcalvinowens]

I've been using Gentoo for almost twenty years!

Patching libraries is easier than any other distro. Just throw the patch in

    /etc/portage/patches/${package}/${name}/

...run one emerge command, and your entire system is now linked to the patched library. For example one of my machines has:

    /etc/portage/patches/media-libs/svt-av1/0001-Address-build-warnings-and-CI-failures-from-enabling.patch

...which is a backport to fix a build error with avx512 enabled.

Same for debugging and cflags, I simply have:

    {0}[calvinow@sousa ~] cat /etc/portage/env/debug-cflags 
    FEATURES="${FEATURES} nostrip"
    COMMON_FLAGS="-Og -ggdb3 -fno-omit-frame-pointer -pipe"
    ...

...and then rebuilding any package with debug cflags is one vim+emerge away:

    {0}[calvinow@sousa ~] cat /etc/portage/package.env/20debug
    media-libs/x264 debug-cflags
    media-libs/x265 debug-cflags
    media-video/ffmpeg debug-cflags