Upstream patch notifications

[Timo Sirainen]

On 1.2.2012, at 3.12, Jeremy Bicha wrote:

> On 31 January 2012 19:54, Timo Sirainen <tss at iki.fi> wrote:
>> So, my question: Is there a possibility for me to get an email about each patch that goes to any of Dovecot related packages, immediately after it gets placed into some kind of testing repository? So that if I notice a potential problem, I could contact you and get it solved before the final release?
>> 
>> I don't know about other upstream coders, but I'd prefer there to be more cooperation. Like, just an example idea: Have upstream-PACKAGE at list.ubuntu.com mailing list where all notifications about diffs to upstream PACKAGE gets sent. Whoever is interested in them can subscribe there. And send an email about the existence of such list to all of the upstreams' mailing lists. Perhaps the Debian's big openssl mistake would have been noticed immediately if such list had existed for them.. I guess it would be even better to have common lists shared by all distros, but maybe that's too much to ask for.
> 
> If you visit https://code.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/dovecot and
> then click the lp:ubuntu/dovecot branch and then click Subscribe
> yourself, you can email notifications when the Ubuntu packaging is
> changed.

Thanks, subscribed now. Although I don't really understand what the attributes and branches are, and what exactly I'm going to get now. But I guess I'll see. And these notifications (non-security ones anyway) are sent long before they become available to everyone's apt-get dist-upgrade, right?

Still, it would be nice if this was somehow more automatic behavior for most upstream maintainers, not just for those like me who suddenly realize they really want this. I would have wanted this years ago if I had thought of it.