> I thought it was okay to unpack upstream sources, move them (perhaps > renaming the source directory to PACKAGENAME-VERSION) and then recreate a > _new_ .orig.tar.gz file. Currently that's ok, though not really necessary. dpkg-source can rename the directory an .orig.tar.gz unpacks into. But what it can't handle is an .orig.tar.gz that doesn't unpack into a subdir at all (admittedly rare, but may happen). Roman