Imporing an already exsting debian package into a git repository is as easy as: &git-import-dsc; package_0.1-1.dsc This will put the upstream sources onto the upstream branch and the debian patch on the master branch. In case of a debian native package only the master branch is being used. Change into your git repository, make sure it has all local modifications committed and do: &git-import-orig; /path/to/package_0.2.orig.tar.gz If the upstream sources are already on a separate branch things are pretty simple. You can either rename that branch to upstream with: mv .git/theupstream-branch .git/upstream or you can tell &git-buildpackage; the name of the branch: cat <<EOF > .git/gbp.conf [DEFAULT] # this is the upstream-branch: upstream-branch=theupstream-branch If you use &git-import-orig; to import new upstream sources, they will end up on theupstream-branch and merged to master. If you don't have an upstream branch but started you repository with only the upstream sources (not the debian patch) you can simply branch from that point. So use &gitkcmd; or &gitcmd;-log to locate the commit-id of that commit and create the upstream branch from there, e.g.: COMMIT_ID=`&gitcmd; log --pretty=oneline | tail -1 | awk '{ print $1 }'` &gitcmd; branch upstream $COMMIT_ID The important thing here is that the COMMIT_ID specifies a point on the master branch that carried only the upstream sources and not the debian modifications. The above example assumes that this was the first commit to that repository. There's currently no easy way to use &git-import-orig; with a repository that never had the upstream sources as a single commit. Using it on such repositories might lead to unexpected merge results. You can use git_load_dirs instead.