[lifthrasiir]

That was the kind of answer I wanted to hear, thanks. (Of course I don't think Debian should be blamed for incidents.) Does Debian send other patches as well? For example, I didn't know that Debian also often creates a man page by its own.

[pabs3]

Debian definitely aims to contribute upstream, but that doesn't always happen, due to upstream CLAs, because most Debian packagers are volunteers, many Debian contributors are busy, many upstreams are inactive and other reasons.

[aragilar]

If you go to https://tracker.debian.org/ for any package, it lists patches that need to be sent upstream.

[lifthrasiir]

Ah, I meant more about policies and guidelines. I'm not well-versed in Debian processes so I can for example imagine that only some patches get sent to the upstream only at the maintainers' discretion. It seems that Debian at least has a policy to maintain patches separate from the upstream source though.

[bayindirh]

Debian uses Quilt system for per-package patch maintenance. While packaging a software you get the original source (i.e. orig.tar.gz), and add patches on top of it with Quilt, and build it that way.

Then you run the tests, and if they pass, you package and upload it.

This allows a patch(set) can be sent to the upstream as a package saying "we did this, and if you want to include them, this apply cleanly to version x.y.z, any feedback is welcome".

[guappa]

In theory you want all patches sent to upstream, but if they're for some specific debian reason then you can not send them.

Patches are maintained separately because debian doesn't normally repack the .tar.gz (or whatever) that the projects publish, as to not invalidate signatures and let people check that the file is in fact the same. An exception is done when the project publishes a file that contains files that cannot legally be redistributed.