Upstream patch notifications

[Clint Byrum]

Excerpts from Timo Sirainen's message of Tue Jan 31 17:26:57 -0800 2012:
> 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.

First off, Thanks for your interest in how we have handled dovecot! Its
always quite helpful to have a strong upstream influence in a package's
maintenance.

The code subscription will get you all the changes to the dev release of
Ubuntu's dovecot package, well before it becomes a supported release,
as long as the package importer is working (sometimes it breaks, and
there's no notification that I know of to watch for this, you just have
to discover it). You may miss things that are only 'fixed' on stable
releases, since sometimes we just backport cherry picked patches.

To make sure you cover those, you should probably subscribe to the
bugmail for dovecot as well:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/dovecot/+subscribe

The two things together should be good enough for you to see any changes
going on in Ubuntu for dovecot. Of course, if we sync back up with Debian,
you may miss things that happen there.