Following Ayende's post on Patch management approaches using centralized SCM, here are how I would have dealt with the 4 issues that he brings up, using a Decentralised SCM.

I use git, so I'll use git terms here. I guess it's quite similar for other DSCM systems.

Note that I haven't used patches on git development as until now all of my git work was on repositories I had write access to, However the principals are the same (i.e. - all of the tree is local to my machine, thus I can reach any point in the history locally).

First I'll clone the hosted repository to my local machine.

• #1
  I'd have created a separate local feature branch for each feature, so separating the patches is easy
• #2
  again, I can do this in two separate local branches, so I do not need to "revert and apply" when I move between the two. I also get to have a complete SCM experience, not only a single patch/step per feature.
  I can also have a third branch, combining the work of the two feature branches, for my own use
• #3
  the second feature's branch would be based on the first one. should the first need some rework that is important to the second, it'd be easy to apply changes on the first, then rebase the second ontop of the updated first
• #4
  just two commits on the same branch.

So, using a DSCM, I can work locally with the benefits of a SCM, have as many branches/features as I want. the whole tree is stored locally, and its blazing fast to switch branches, so I can easily work on every aspect I want, and easily create a patch from every node in the history tree, to send to the project owners.

After failing to setup git access to my newly created repository on git-hub, I managed to nail the problem, thanks to Lee Henson's good advice (and by re-reading the hint text)

After generating the public key (with puttygen) I copied to git-hub only the key itself (the HEX part), while I was also supposed to copy the text surrounding it, as can be seen in the image below:

Now that I'm getting old, I need to keep up with the cool kids, so I'm taking git for a spin.

Downloaded MSys Git.

Upon install I went for the git-bash option.  Running the bash shell has reminded my some of the old unix memories, however I am much more comfy with the windows shell these days, so I have manually added the the path things needed for running in cmd.exe/f

Now it was time to test remote. Luckily enough I got a git-hub invitation.

Step 1 - signup to git-hub.

downloaded the newest putty, then used puttygen to generate public and private key.

Step 2 - create a private repository - went smoothly.

Step 3 - trying to push to the remote repo.

I ran the PAGEANT.EXE tool, loaded it with the private key, and set the GIT_SSH environment variable to point to PLINK.EXE.

Then tried to "git push origin master" and got a message like "The server's key signature is not in the registry, press 'y' for storing in the registry, 'n' for skipping, 'return' to exit". the problem is - it got stuck, no input allowed except ctrl-C.

Then I tried to putty directly to the server, and now it did let me press the y, hoora - server's public key's signature is stored.

You'd think could push to the repository? think again. I then started getting other weird errors like "No supported authentication methods available".

grrrrr.

Maybe Ill try again tomorrow.

UPDATE (07/04/2008 - I guess tomorrow is a flexible term these days ...):
It was me being silly. Now it works perfectly