What patches are 'vital' to your use of Gramps 5.1.x and 5.2.x?

You can use Matt’s new site to look for add-ons specifically for 5.2 (or any other version)

It’s generally better to have a graceful fail with prerequisites check instead of a hang with no feedback. But adding that sort of precautionary error handling adds a lot code to a program. It is a judgement call.