best policies for third party Debian packaging and get-orig-source target

[Faheem Mitha <faheem@faheem.info>]

Hi,

I've got Debian packaging for a piece of software I've written. This 
software probably is too specialized to be part of Debian. In any case, 
for now I have no plans to try to include it in Debian. However, I'd like 
to follow best practices to the extent possible.

Currently the Debian packaging is part of the same repository as the 
software, in the subdirectory debian/. I'm wondering if I should put it in 
a separate repository. Also, currently the package is being built as a 
Debian native package, which isn't really appropriate. I guess I could add 
a get-orig-source target for building the orig tarball to rules, but is it 
Ok to build a orig.tar.gz file from a local repository, or is it necessary 
to get it from remote? If the former, are there any recommended approaches 
for, for example, passing the location of the repository to the 
get-orig-source target?

I'm not sure if this topic is appropriate for this list. if not, I can 
take it elsewhere. Please CC me - I'm not subscribed.

                                                     Regards, Faheem Mitha