Status of the 'debian/patches disaster'?

[neroden@twcny.rr.com (Nathanael Nerode)]

Looking at branches/4.3.0/sid/debian/TODO, it looks like this is a large
portion of the remaining work to get 4.3.0 into unstable.

But I'm not finding the status list terribly helpful, and I'm not sure it's
actually up to date.

I'm especially confused by the ones in the list
which appear to be present in branches/4.3.0/sid/debian/patches, nearly
unchanged, such as 910_Xserver_RTFF.diff -- but aren't marked in the list.

Is it reasonable to do the following?
* Look at a patch in the list.
* See if it's already present in upstream 4.3.0; if so suggest marking it
'upstream'.
* See if it's superseded by a patch present in
branches/4.3.0/sid/debian/patches; if so suggest marking it 'merged' or
'unchanged', depending.

-- 
Nathanael Nerode  <neroden at gcc.gnu.org>
http://home.twcny.rr.com/nerode/neroden/fdl.html