Question about working with upstream vs patches

[Troy Curtis Jr]

Howdy,

I'd like to help work toward the Fedora move toward Python 3.  There is
lots of good information out there about much of the process, but I did
have a few questions about how you like to do things, and the proper
work-flow.

If I start working on a particular package, should I mention as such in the
associated porting bugtracker ticket?  I could see it either way, either it
needless clutters the ticket comments, or it is helpful for the next guy to
pick a different package.

I already started looking at gpsd, since I've had some experience with it,
and it is bound to be challenging!  I was proven right pretty quickly.  It
is all perfectly workable, but I wanted to know the general expectation.
For changes to python modules/scripts themselves to support python 3, does
this need to flow through upstream in all cases?  Most of my packaging
experience has been with the enterprise distros, and there are always loads
of patches carried along with the sources, but in this case do you require
an official release from the upstream project with the necessary changes?

I certainly plan on providing all the changes upstream, but the last
release was almost 2 years ago, so I'm not certain when a new one might be
expected (the project is still active though).

Thanks,
Troy Curtis