Debian git workflow

[Felix Natter <fnatter@gmx.net>]

hello mentors,

my workflow with more complex packages is that I start early and push
the packaging (branching off the current alioth stable version) to
github.com/fnatter/foo-debian-unstable, where I import almost every
beta, fix the problems that occur and push the result to github.

That way, my changes are securely stored and errors are easier to debug
because I know which beta caused it (and it is less pressure on me
when the actual release happens).

However, this means that I copy all the changes to the stable alioth
repo when the result happens, and while I try to put issues in separate
commits, three issues remain:

- all the pieces of work (update dep X, fix man page, bump
  Standards-Version, fix lintian Y, ...) have (almost) the same
  timestamp
  
- different changes to one file share a commit
 (I know there is git functionality to split this, but this has so far
 been too error-prone for me).

- collaboration is made more difficult

As an example, see:
  http://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/pkg-java/knopflerfish-osgi.git

The advantage of this approach is that the upstream/master branch does
not contain all those unneeded (orig-)imports (which can be ~10 per
release)..

--> What do you think, which approach is better?

Thanks and Best Regards,
-- 
Felix Natter