sorry if you felt bad for this...
I admit I'm having not much time nowadays to keep up with RFS, and for newcomers the process is somewhat slower...
I feel sad for your gbp sentence, I like instead it really a lot, next time (if you want of course),
you can do something easy such as:
git clone repo
cd repo
uscan
gbp import-orig --pristine-tar ../tarball.tar.gz
do your modifications and commit
gbp dch
fix changelog
send an email requesting sponsorhip without even having to do the RFS.
I don't think it is more difficult than your current workflow, but it makes easier to review single changes, and to know why you did and what (if commit
messages are self explanatory).
I have to say, at the end your work has gone into the archive, so the time was not lost at all, and I thank you for the nice contribution you did.
I only had to revert a Break relationship you had erroneously bumped, and everything else was nice on the first shot, something not easy to be seen
on a first RFS bug.
Please let me know if you want to contribute more on Debian, I'm pretty sure you have the required skills to do it in the proper way, even if it might be
a little bit more difficult than the Fedora approach (and trust me, it used to be even more difficult, now with salsa we at least have one common place for
git repositories)
Gianfranco