git-buildpackage and patches

[Pietro Battiston <me@pietrobattiston.it>]

Hello,

I like git-buildpackage a lot. But I don't understand what's "the right
way" to manage patches.

The git-buildpackage manual suggests it's gbp-pq, which works on a
separate branch. I would have nothing against this approach, if it
worked transparently. Instead, when I "import" and then "export"
patches, they change names and, most importantly, content.

By "most importantly" I mean it makes it impossible to follow
http://dep.debian.net/deps/dep3/ .

On the other side, using quilt is just fine... but I do find great the
idea that if you use a VCS, you _shouldn't_ need a separate tool for
patches. And indeed, I see sometimes git-buildpackage automatically
creates some patches named "debian-changes-x.y.z" - but I find the
workflow of building the package every time I need to create a patch
sub-optimal - and apparently undocumented.

I would dream of

1) git status is clean: I do some modifications
2) I run something like "git-producepatch patchname"
3) I get a file in debian/patches
4) I edit the description and commit

then ideally,
5) a command for editing existing patches which applies them and lets me
work on the patched tree and then update the patch,

utopically,
6) the ability to notice that a patch was accepted in upstream and
automatically discard it.

Is there anything I'm missing?

Thanks

Pietro