Hi,
So, consider a package I'm team-maintaining in Debian, john. I'm currently applying several patches, something like 17 or so. Should I keep 17 separate branches for this? And how to handle patches touching the same files but in different points? (i.e. what the "series", "00list" and kinda files do,establishing patch applying order)
Just a quick comment: On the vcs-pkg ML, people are raving over topgit, a tool for patch management working on top of git. I haven't tried it, so that's all I know, but apparently topgit can manage your patch-branches for you in a logical manner.
My 2 cents is the git is the most elegant of the modern DVCS'es. Bazaar is another possible choice but I find it rather clunky compared to git; in bzr different branches reside in different directories which sounds like an easy transition from svn but I much prefer gits "all-in-one" approach.
Cheers, Morten