Make patching API public
to be used by bazel’s error prone plugin: https://github.com/bazelbuild/bazel/pull/21640
@cushon this change is being successfully used at Uber to enable Error Prone auto-patching to work with Bazel, along with https://github.com/bazelbuild/bazel/pull/21640. I have a follow-on Error Prone fix that makes auto-patching also work for plug-in checks, which I'm happy to contribute as a PR as well (though it makes more sense to land after this one).
Independent of the Bazel change, this PR seems straightforward and could be helpful for any build system trying to integrate Error Prone. So, it'd be great if someone from the EP team could review it sometime. Thanks!
@cushon are any other steps required for this one to land? Thanks for the help!