[Oneiric-Topic] Reducing number of patches in our packages

[Rodrigo Moya]

Priority: medium?

While working on the GNOME3 PPA during this cycle, I found we have a lot
of patches in many packages, which makes things harder when upgrading to
major versions, and also introduces new ways for the apps to fail, as
the fixes are rebased to apply to the new upstream version.

While some patches make a lot of sense, others are better kept in the
upstream source, where the upstream developers can guarantee the quality
accross major versions upgrades.

So, for next cycle, I would suggest a "small" goal of trying to do patch
upstreaming/cleaning days, maybe once a week or every 2 weeks.

Also, some Ubuntu-specific patches, like the appindicators ones are
duplicated in lots of packages, so it would be good if we could find a
better way to make upstream apps use them, like, for instance, patching
gtk_status_icon_* in GTK itself to use the indicators when available,
instead of having to patch dozens of apps (and keep those patches
up-to-date and working for every major version upgrade).

Another candidate for that could be the launchpad integration patches,
which are present in many more packages than the appindicators ones. I'm
sure we can find a way to have that in GTK itself, so that whenever a
Help menu is created, and given we have the name of the app, it could
just create the LPI entries.