Some thoughts from a new guy. I would suggest the best way might be to take the 'main' labs sources distribution and build one patch at a time. Should in theory leave behind it a nice linear list of patches from a common base and might get some patches ready to go into sources (if accepted) for features and/or hardware that 9atom, 9front etc. have added that sources does not.
It would also force a 'list' of the new features compared to sources to be created so if someone has quietly added X and no one has noticed it will be tripped over. Corollary is it would be dropped if it's not tripped over which may be good or bad depending on your view.
