Subtheming to add a single template? As a programmer, I know a great deal about Drupals backend functionality, but little about theming. I'm using Corolla as a theme, and I want to add a single Views template to the theme.

Initially, I created a blank subtheme, but some of Corollas settings don't show up on my subtheme's settings page, so apparently this changed functionality.

Now I'm considering simply keeping my template as a local patch to Corolla as that's a way of solving the problem that I understand well.

How would you go about solving this issue?
The theme settings not being inherited by the subtheme is a Drupal core bug. If you simply copy the theme settings from the parent's .info file to the subtheme's .info file, it will alleviate the issue.

However, keeping a local patch of the theme is a reasonable solution in this case. The rule of "dont edit a contrib theme" is really in place just to ease potential updates, etc. for users who may be unaware of the risk of losing their changes upon updating themes/modules.