Workflow - Tracking upstream repository with local patches

[Paul Moore]

I'm trying to work out what the optimal workflow would be with Bazaar
for the following situation:

I'm tracking an upstream project (which is using svn, not bzr, but
that's not a big deal, I can use bzr-svn) where I only have read
access. I have some local patches of my own, which I am working on,
and which I would ultimately like to provide as a individual patches
to the project.

I think I need the following - a "clean" branch from upstream, into
which I periodically pull changes, and a local branch for each of my
patches, which I maintain and periodically merge from my upstream
mirror. To submit a patch, I'd bzr diff between my branch and the
upstream mirror, and submit that.

One issue with this is that my feature branches' history will be
cluttered with regular "merge from upstream" checkins. I can see the
value of this, but it will clutter the history of my feature
development. Is there any way of avoiding this? Would the loom
extension help here?

Does anyone have any suggestions as to how this workflow might be improved?

Thanks,
Paul.