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): &git-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 (preverably 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 &git-import-dsc;: &gitcmd; checkout master &git-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. Since &pbuilder; uses different command line arguments than &debuild; and &dpkg-buildpackage; we can't simply pass the options on the command line but have to wrap them in the --git-builder option instead. git-pbuilder helps you with that: git-buildpackage --git-builder="git-pbuilder" --git-cleaner="fakeroot debian/rules clean" Note that we also used a different clean command since since &pdebuildcmd; clean means something different than &debuildcmd; clean. We can shorten this further by using ~/.gbp.conf: cat <<EOF > ~/.gbp.conf [DEFAULT] # tell git-buildpackage howto clean the source tree cleaner = fakeroot debian/rules clean # this is how we invoke pbuilder, arguments passed to git-buildpackage will be # passed to dpkg-buildpackge in the chroot builder = /usr/bin/git-pbuilder git-pbuilder defaults to building a package for the sid distribution. If you want to build for another distribution pass this in the DIST environment variable. Invoking &git-buildpackage; will now invoke &pdebuildcmd; by default and all additional command line arguments are passed to dpkg-buildpackage. If you want to use debuild again (without modifying ~/.gbp.conf) you can use: git-buildpackage --git-builder=debuild Furthermore, if you don't want this for all your invocations of &git-buildpackage; you can use .git/gbp.conf in one of your &git; repositories instead of ~/.gbp.conf. Whenever you need to work on an arbitrary Debian package you can check it right into &git; with one command: git-import-dsc --download package cd package git-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 git-commit -a git-diff debian -- to get a nice patch that can be submitted to the Debian BTS. You can also fetch the source package from an URL: git-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.