Ubuntu – How to get a patch applied to a package, when the upstream maintainer does not seem active

There are a couple ways to do this.

1. You can install ubiquity and edit the code on your machine (in /usr/lib/ubiquity/*). Then just run it and play around. It will adjust some global machine settings, so be prepared for your language or keyboard to change as you select values. And remember you probably don't want to repartition your hard drive as you're using it (it actually won't let you). But you can partition a thumb drive easily enough.

2. You can burn a Live CD/thumb drive easily enough and run it. During installation, you can do the same trick and edit ubiquity's files in /usr/lib/ubiquity (Alt+Ctrl+T to bring up a Terminal). You may need to kill any existing instances of ubiquity and restart it:

   sudo pkill ubiq
   
   ubiquity --automatic # automatic because that's what the Live CD uses
   

You could also use a virtual machine to test, but that has always been more work than it's worth for me. I usually just use method #1.

Those are the easiest ways. You could also grab the Ubuntu source, edit it, build a new package, install it, and then play with it. But you indicated you wanted to avoid that.

I'd suggest something a little different than Flimzy. Take a look at git-import-dsc and possibly git-debimport. They will auto-magically create separate upstream, debian, and prinstine-tar branches from at Debian source package. You could then create your own branch for your patch set. Each time a new upload to Ubuntu is made, you can just run git-import-dsc on the new package and merge with your branch.

Even simpler would be to use bzr if you are not wed to git. Each Ubuntu package can also be found in a bzr branch. bzr branch ubuntu:$PACKAGE_NAME will grab the source branch for you. Make your changes and commit. Then when ever a new Ubuntu upload is made, you can simply run bzr merge-package ubuntu:$PACKAGE_NAME