I'm not sure if I always agree in the case of external libraries (lib-src) like sbsms. When I was first notified of timestretch issues in audacity a few months ago, I submitted a partial bugfix to lib-src/sbsms that was not part of a library release, and somebody called me on it. I agreed that it would be best in principle to submit changes to lib-src that atomically synchronize with a library release - otherwise maintaining two copies of the library is troublesome. Since then I've been working on the next release with that in mind, and it unexpectedly turned in to a major rewrite.Multiple small commits that fix issues independently are preferred over big commits that make multiple improvements and fixes.
I suppose that since lib-src/sbsms is already out of sync with a release, it can't hurt to fix what's there in the meantime, and then subsequently keep them in sync, especially since, as pointed out, the actual fix for bug 172 is relatively straightforward. I agree that this is the most sensible thing to do at this point, regardless of how close I want to think I am to a shiny new sbsms release, so I'll suck it up and dust off an old version that resolves the bug with minimal changes and submit that before touching the new stuff any more. It should be noted that there are known problems and limitations with what I will submit.