I was given this advice from Arthur, a Debian developer, but I can't find some of the finer details I'm looking for:
------- I recommend looking at https://wiki.debian.org/UpstreamGuide to some pointers about how to make it easy to ensure your software can be easily packaged in Debian. If you're looking to create a deb package that is ready to be included in Debian it is best to have your debian/ directory on a separate branch. I recommend using git-buildpackage, see https://wiki.debian.org/PackagingWithGit (this is what most collaboratively maintained packages use now). For information on how to create Debian packages see https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/developers-reference/ (particularly chapters 5 and 6). If you want to look at more of the background there is the policy document, see https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ There are a lot of tools for efficiently building Debian packages. If you want to test your builds in a more controlled environment you should probably use pbuilder (of cowbuilder) because those use a clean chroot to build your packages to ensure you have the correct dependencies specified. Hope this helps ---------- Thanks