Hi, I am afraid that you have run into restrictions about the version numbering scheme imposed by Debian Policy. Your revision number is taken to have an upstream version (work) and a debian-revision, which is the rest of the revision field. The upstream version is not allowed to have only non-digits. remove the hyphen (replacing it by a period `.' and all will be well.
try make-kpkg --revision work.1.2.3 kernel-image (no hyphens), and things should work. I'll try to document this in the readme file. manoj dpkg programmers' manual - chapter 5 Version numbering Every package has a version number, in its Version control file field. dpkg imposes an ordering on version numbers, so that it can tell whether packages are being up- or downgraded and so that dselect can tell whether a package it finds available is newer than the one installed on the system. The version number format has the most significant parts (as far as comparison is concerned) at the beginning. The version number format is: [epoch:]upstream-version[-debian-revision]. The three components here are: epoch This is a single unsigned integer, which should usually be small. It may be omitted, in which case zero is assumed. If it is omitted then the upstream-version may not contain any colons. It is provided to allow mistakes in the version numbers of older versions of a package, and also a package's previous version numbering schemes, to be left behind. dpkg will not usually display the epoch unless it is essential (non-zero, or if the upstream-version contains a colon); dselect does not display epochs at all in the main part of the package selection display. upstream-version This is the main part of the version. It is usually version number of the original (`upstream') package of which the .deb file has been made, if this is applicable. Usually this will be in the same format as that specified by the upstream author(s); however, it may need to be reformatted to fit into dpkg's format and comparison scheme. The comparison behaviour of dpkg with respect to the upstream-version is described below. The upstream-version portion of the version number is mandatory. The upstream-version may contain only alphanumerics and the characters + . - : (full stop, plus, hyphen, colon) and should start with a digit. If there is no debian-revision then hyphens are not allowed; if there is no epoch then colons are not allowed. debian-revision This part of the version represents the version of the modifications that were made to the package to make it a Debian binary package. It is in the same format as the upstream-version and dpkg compares it in the same way. It is optional; if it isn't present then the upstream-version may not contain a hyphen. This format represents the case where a piece of software was written specifically to be turned into a Debian binary package, and so there is only one `debianization' of it and therefore no revision indication is required. It is conventional to restart the debian-revision at 1 each time the upstream-version is increased. dpkg will break the upstream-version and debian-revision apart at the last hyphen in the string. The absence of a debian-revision compares earlier than the presence of one (but note that the debian-revision is the least significant part of the version number). The debian-revision may contain only alphanumerics and the characters + and . (plus and full stop). -- A man forgives only when he is in the wrong. Manoj Srivastava <url:mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Mobile, Alabama USA <url:http://www.datasync.com/%7Esrivasta/>