I want to describe how to write a nice get-orig-source target for debian/rules in presence of an upstream SVN repository.

Let's first consider that <pkg> is currently in sid with version x.y-z (upstream version = x.y, Debian revision = z).

Choose the right version

There are two differents path here, based on what "version" of the upstream code you're packaging

  1. the code in the svn is the update for the version x.y but you don't know yet how upstream would call it
  2. the code in the svn is the preliminary version the new upstream release, be it x.(y+1) or x.y.n

A couple of magic characters you can use in version come in our help here: '~' and '+'; here are how they are interpreted

x.(y+1)-1
   or     > x.y+foo-1 > x.y-z > x.y~bar-1
x.y.n-1

So, here it is how you have to choose the version number for the svn snapshot:

  1. if x.y-z is in sid and you're packaging the new version "without a name", then go with x.y+svn<rev>-1

  2. if x.y-z is in sid and you're packaging the new version x.(y+1) or x.y.n, then go with x.(y+1)~svn<rev>-1 or x.y.n~svn<rev>-1

Update the debian/changelog

now that you have your new package version what you have to do is:

$ dch -v "<new version>" "New upstream SVN snapshot"

Create get-orig-source target for debian/rules

We are almost done, we need to create the get-orig-source target in debian/rules file:

PACKAGE = <YOUR PACKAGE NAME>
SRC_VERSION := $(shell dpkg-parsechangelog | sed -ne 's/^Version: \(.*\)-.*/\1/p')
SVN_REVISION := $(shell echo $(SRC_VERSION) | awk -F"+" '{ print $$2 }' | sed 's/svn//' )
TARBALL = $(PACKAGE)_$(SRC_VERSION).orig.tar.gz

.PHONY: get-orig-source
get-orig-source:
        rm -rf get-orig-source $(TARBALL)
        mkdir get-orig-source
        svn export -r $(SVN_REVISION) <UPSTREAM SVN REPOSITORY> get-orig-source/$(PACKAGE)-$(SRC_VERSION)
        tar czf $(TARBALL) -C get-orig-source $(PACKAGE)-$(SRC_VERSION)
        rm -rf get-orig-source
        echo "  "$(TARBALL)" created; move it to the right destination to build the package"

Some explanations:

Notes

Thanks to