What is the purpose of the patches section in an overlay kustomization.yaml?

• A. They declare new resources to be included in the build
• B. They specify the path to deployment manifests
• C. They modify fields of existing resources
• D. They set the namespace for resources

Answer: (C)

Patches in an overlay kustomization.yaml are used to modify fields of resources that already exist in the base. They let you tailor how the same resources behave in different environments without duplicating entire manifests. By applying a patch, you can change things like the image tag, replica count, environment variables, or resource requests/limits on those existing resources. This top-on-top approach is what makes overlays powerful for environment-specific customization. If you need to add new resources, you place them in the resources list instead of in patches.