diff --git a/pkgs/applications/science/math/sage/patches/revert-269c1e1551285.patch b/pkgs/applications/science/math/sage/patches/revert-269c1e1551285.patch
deleted file mode 100644
index b57e48b86dec..000000000000
--- a/pkgs/applications/science/math/sage/patches/revert-269c1e1551285.patch
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,14 +0,0 @@
-reverted:
---- b/src/sage/geometry/polyhedron/backend_cdd.py
-+++ a/src/sage/geometry/polyhedron/backend_cdd.py
-@@ -154,7 +154,9 @@
-             ...    [0.62, -1.38, 0.38],[0.144, -1.04, 0.04],
-             ...    [0.1309090909, -1.0290909091, 0.04]]
-             sage: Polyhedron(point_list)
-+            Traceback (most recent call last):
-+            ...
-+            ValueError: *Error: Numerical inconsistency is found.  Use the GMP exact arithmetic.
--            A 3-dimensional polyhedron in RDF^3 defined as the convex hull of 14 vertices
-             sage: Polyhedron(point_list, base_ring=QQ)
-             A 3-dimensional polyhedron in QQ^3 defined as the convex hull of 14 vertices
-         """
diff --git a/pkgs/applications/science/math/sage/sage-src.nix b/pkgs/applications/science/math/sage/sage-src.nix
index d342fba21164..c97785c574cb 100644
--- a/pkgs/applications/science/math/sage/sage-src.nix
+++ b/pkgs/applications/science/math/sage/sage-src.nix
@@ -156,7 +156,12 @@ stdenv.mkDerivation rec {
       sha256 = "0fmw7pzbaxs2dshky6iw9pr8i23p9ih2y2lw661qypdrxh5xw03k";
       stripLen = 1;
     })
-    ./patches/revert-269c1e1551285.patch
+    (fetchpatch {
+      name = "revert-cddlib-doctest-changes.patch";
+      url = "https://git.sagemath.org/sage.git/patch/?id=269c1e1551285566b8ba7a2b890989e5590e9f11";
+      sha256 = "12bcjhq7hm2pmmj2bgjvcffjyls2x7q61ivlnaj5v5bsvhc183iy";
+      revert = true;
+    })
 
 
     # Only formatting changes.
diff --git a/pkgs/build-support/fetchpatch/default.nix b/pkgs/build-support/fetchpatch/default.nix
index c185497e6913..40a7675b7ac5 100644
--- a/pkgs/build-support/fetchpatch/default.nix
+++ b/pkgs/build-support/fetchpatch/default.nix
@@ -5,11 +5,15 @@
 # stripLen acts as the -p parameter when applying a patch.
 
 { lib, fetchurl, patchutils }:
-{ stripLen ? 0, extraPrefix ? null, excludes ? [], ... }@args:
+{ stripLen ? 0, extraPrefix ? null, excludes ? [], includes ? [], revert ? false, ... }@args:
 
 fetchurl ({
   postFetch = ''
     tmpfile="$TMPDIR/${args.sha256}"
+    if [ ! -s "$out" ]; then
+      echo "error: Fetched patch file '$out' is empty!" 1>&2
+      exit 1
+    fi
     "${patchutils}/bin/lsdiff" "$out" \
       | sort -u | sed -e 's/[*?]/\\&/g' \
       | xargs -I{} \
@@ -21,10 +25,29 @@ fetchurl ({
            --addnewprefix=b/${extraPrefix} \
         ''} \
         --clean "$out" > "$tmpfile"
+    if [ ! -s "$tmpfile" ]; then
+      echo "error: Normalized patch '$tmpfile' is empty (while the fetched file was not)!" 1>&2
+      echo "Did you maybe fetch a HTML representation of a patch instead of a raw patch?" 1>&2
+      echo "Fetched file was:" 1>&2
+      cat "$out" 1>&2
+      exit 1
+    fi
     ${patchutils}/bin/filterdiff \
       -p1 \
-      ${builtins.toString (builtins.map (x: "-x ${x}") excludes)} \
+      ${builtins.toString (builtins.map (x: "-x ${lib.escapeShellArg x}") excludes)} \
+      ${builtins.toString (builtins.map (x: "-i ${lib.escapeShellArg x}") includes)} \
       "$tmpfile" > "$out"
-    ${args.postFetch or ""}
-  '';
-} // builtins.removeAttrs args ["stripLen" "extraPrefix" "excludes" "postFetch"])
+
+    if [ ! -s "$out" ]; then
+      echo "error: Filtered patch '$out$' is empty (while the original patch file was not)!" 1>&2
+      echo "Check your includes and excludes." 1>&2
+      echo "Normalizd patch file was:" 1>&2
+      cat "$tmpfile" 1>&2
+      exit 1
+    fi
+  '' + lib.optionalString revert ''
+    ${patchutils}/bin/interdiff "$out" /dev/null > "$tmpfile"
+    mv "$tmpfile" "$out"
+  '' + (args.postFetch or "");
+  meta.broken = excludes != [] && includes != [];
+} // builtins.removeAttrs args ["stripLen" "extraPrefix" "excludes" "includes" "revert" "postFetch"])