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In case someone else stumbles across this question: note that the /opt/ros package directories are intended to be shared by all users on that system.

Modifying their contents is not a good idea.

As shark hinted above, if you need to modify one of the installed packages, check the sources for its stack out of the source repository, placing them ahead of the /opt/ros stacks in the $ROS_PACKAGE_PATH. Then, use rosmake normally to build your modified version. That way, tools like svn diff or git diff make it easy to submit your changes as a patch.