[RFC] Tracking upstream submissions

[Deepak Saxena]

Hi,

In going through various kernel bugs and check-ing in certain
changes such as the SD corruption fix (#6532) and support for
a link-layer TTL (#6211), I'm wanting to add a standard way
to track whether a patch has been pushed upstream that is 
independent of whether it has been fixed in the OLPC builds.

A good example of why we need this this is the SD bug. We now 
have a simple workaround that fixes the issue on the XO but the
fix is definetely not acceptable upstream and a proper fix requires
more time than I can invest at the moment due to the upcoming
release and higher priority fixes. From the perspective of 
OLPC and the XO users, this bug is fixed so the bug should
be closed out at some point. From my perspective as a developer,
I still need to fix this and I need a way to track this.

I imagine that I'm not the only developer who has to deal with
non-upstream patches so would like a standard way to track these
and they don't just get dropped and forgotten about.

The are a couple of options here:

- What we did at my previous job was to create a "related incident"
  by cloning the existing bug and marking the milestone as "Upstream".
  We don't have cloning AFAICT with our trac, so an option suggested
  by Jim that would work is to create a new upstream bug and then
  mark the original bug as a blocker for the upstream bug (or the
  otherway around?)

- Another is to use to go ahead and close the bug and then use
  one of the following keywords:

  upstream:? Needs to be submitted upstream
  upstream:- Rejected or will never be pushed upstream
  upstream:+ Accepted upstream

- A third option is to use the "Action Needed" field and add
  a "Sumbit Upstream" option.

Thoughts? 

Tnx,
~Deepak

-- 
Deepak Saxena <dsaxena at laptop.org>