Try to shift your mentality so you try to get patches to make it into releases more importantly than into HEAD. If the patch still compiles then its not a big deal if its not in yet as long as it cleanly applies and makes it in before a tag.
We are separating the release structure to build multiple channels. This is not easy. If we don't do it people will get mad that we have no stable channel. If we do it, people get mad we are too slow to add their patches. Unfortunately someone will always be mad. Even George Lucas gets yelled at for not making Star Wars right. Sadly I must make decisions that are not 100% favorable but your patch is a welcomed addition since we clearly missed it when we changed all the other modules. Going forward think of it terms of seasons. We will have release season where we slow down and make sure the code is stable and we will have development season when we change everything. 1.5 is coming out soon as the HEAD for 1.4. Then we can look at some more patches that have been lingering.