Not switching to 3.0 (quilt) just yet
I had a look at the 3.0 source formats just now. I've never been very fond of that, mainly because of the fact that it wants to store individual patches for no particularly good reason1. However, recently I found out about the --single-debian-patch option to dpkg-source, which makes the 3.0 (quilt) format behave somewhat more like the non-native 1.0 format, which is good.
Unfortunately, "somewhat more" does not mean "entirely". For some weird reason, after converting the source to a 3.0 source package and running "dpkg-buildpackage", I find that suddenly my source tree is devoid of the patches that I'd applied to it.
I'm sure there's another option hidden somewhere to make it not do that either, but I was quickly annoyed about it enough that I didn't care anymore. I just removed the debian/source directory entirely again, instead.
Maybe I'll look into this again at some future point, but it's pretty unlikely.
1I have all my packages stored in git with a proper Vcs-Git: header; if people really want to look at individual patches, they can just use debcheckout, kthxbye.
is that the patches and their metadata are in a common format, enabling websites like the patch-tracker that give a unified view on our package. Compare http://patch-tracker.debian.org/package/libnss-myhostname/0.3-5 with http://patch-tracker.debian.org/package/logtool/1.2.8-8 – what would be more useful for upstream, or anyone who wants to check the patchiness of the package?
Of course your packages are available and well documented, but „somewhere“, and not with the package. Imagine every Debian developer running his own bugtracker, just because he does not like the BTS. It would be convenient for the developer, but would cause friction everywhere else.
I, for one think, like my new 3.0 (quilt) overlords.