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Better notifications for sync requests



Here's something that comes up fairly often for me, and I don't know whether
there's a better way to handle this.  If not, maybe there should be. :)

Quite often I make some changes to a package in Ubuntu, but I don't actually
want to upload to Ubuntu first.  A good, recent example, are many changes to
switch Python packages to use dh_python2.  In cases where there is currently
no Ubuntu delta, I always use `submittodebian` to create an issue in Debian,
attaching the patch I used to make the switch.  The principle being, let's try
to get the patch into Debian first, and then sync to Ubuntu.

This often works quite well.  For many packages, just waiting a few days or a
week finds that the Debian maintainer will incorporate the patch and close the
issue.  Then, I'll get a nice email that contains something like this:

-----snip snip-----
Source: ibus-table
Source-Version: 1.3.0.20100621-3

We believe that the bug you reported is fixed in the latest version of
ibus-table, which is due to be installed in the Debian FTP archive:

ibus-table_1.3.0.20100621-3.debian.tar.gz
  to main/i/ibus-table/ibus-table_1.3.0.20100621-3.debian.tar.gz
ibus-table_1.3.0.20100621-3.dsc
  to main/i/ibus-table/ibus-table_1.3.0.20100621-3.dsc
ibus-table_1.3.0.20100621-3_all.deb
  to main/i/ibus-table/ibus-table_1.3.0.20100621-3_all.deb
-----snip snip-----

So far so good.

The problem comes in that afaict, this doesn't mean that the source package is
actually available in the Debian archive yet, and I (think I) cannot do a
syncrequest in Ubuntu until it is.  However, I'll never get a notification
about its *actual* availability, so the above email just puts me in poll-mode.
That's not ideal, especially because I don't really know how long I will have
to poll, or at what interval, etc.

I think one of two things could help:

* Update the bug report (using the Closes: tags) when the source package is
  actually available in the Debian archive.

* In Ubuntu, somehow be able to set up a "pending sync request" so that when I
  get the above email, I could effectively say "hey, when you can, please sync
  the new Debian package".  Of course, for the benefit of the archive admins,
  you'd like the relevant Launchpad bug to provide the notification itself
  when the request version becomes available.

Or maybe something else.

Is there anything DEX can do to help?

Cheers,
-Barry

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