If you have to handle non-DFSG clean upstream sources, you can use a different branch which you have to create once: &gitcmd; branch dfsg_clean upstream This creates the dfsg_clean branch from the tip of a branch called upstream. Then, when importing a new upstream version, you import the new version on the upstream-branch (by default named upstream) as usual and just don't merge to the debian-branch (by default named master): &gbp-import-orig; --no-merge /path/to/nondfsg-clean-package_10.4.orig.tar.gz &gitcmd; tag 10.4 After the import, you can switch to the dfsg_clean branch and get the newly imported changes from the upstream branch: &gitcmd; checkout dfsg_clean &gitcmd; pull . upstream Now make this checkout dfsg clean (preferably by a cleanup script), commit your changes and merge to your debian-branch: cleanup-script.sh &gitcmd; commit -a -m "Make source dfsg clean" &gitcmd; tag 10.4.dfsg &gitcmd; checkout master &gitcmd; pull . dfsg_clean First, create a branch that holds the NMUs from the tip of your debian-branch (default is master) once: &gitcmd; branch nmu master To import an NMU, change into the git repository and use &gbp-import-dsc;: &gitcmd; checkout master &gbp-import-dsc; --debian-branch=nmu /path/to/package_1.0-1nmu0.dsc This will import the NMU onto the branched named nmu instead of the default master. This method can also be used to import "old" releases into the &git; repository when migrating to &git; from another VCS. &cowbuilder; is nice tool to build Debian packages in a defined environment. It makes sure all build-dependencies are specified correctly by building the package in a clean chroot. As its cousin &pbuilder; it can be extended via hooks to (e.g. run autopkg tests) but doesn't need a tarball unpacked but uses copy on write tree to speed up the build. Since &cowbuilder; uses different command line arguments than &debuild; and &dpkg-buildpackage;, we can't simply pass the options to run it on the command line. To simplifiy the integration we use a separate helper named &git-pbuilder;. &gbp; has it's own command line option for this: &gbp-buildpackage; --git-pbuilder This will set the build command to run &git-pbuilder; (which invokes &cowbuilder; by default) and the clean command to /bin/true. It also activates the parsing of several &git-pbuilder; related options like --git-dist, --git-arch and --git-pbuilder-options. We can make &git-pbuilder; usage the default by adding it to ~/.gbp.conf: cat <<EOF > ~/.gbp.conf [DEFAULT] # We invoke cowbuilder via git-pbuilder. Arguments passed to &gbp-buildpackage; # will be passed to dpkg-buildpackage in the chroot pbuilder = True EOF git-pbuilder defaults to building a package for the sid distribution. If you want to build for another distribution, pass this in the --git-dist option: &gbp-buildpackage; --git-pbuilder --git-dist=jessie If you want to use debuild again (without modifying ~/.gbp.conf), you can use: &gbp-buildpackage; --git-no-pbuilder In order for all of the above to work you have to create a base chroot first using &git-pbuilder; git-pbuilder create This can later be updated using git-pbuilder update Whenever you need to work on an arbitrary &debian; package, you can check it right into &git; with one command: &gbp-import-dsc --download package cd package &gitcmd; branch debian This uses apt-get to download the source package, puts the orig tarball on the upstream-branch and the &debian; changes on the debian-branch (by default master). The second command creates a branch called debian. Now you can easily modify the package, revert changes you made, create other branches for testing, see what changes you made, etc. When finished, just do &gitcmd; commit -a &gitcmd; diff debian -- to get a nice patch that can be submitted to the &debian; BTS. You can also fetch the source package from a URL: &gbp-import-dsc --download http://mentors.debian.net/debian/pool/main/i/ipsec-tools/ipsec-tools_0.7.3-9.dsc The import works incrementally; you can import new versions on top of already imported ones for e.g. easy review of changes.