* Stefano Zacchiroli <zack@debian.org>, 2009-05-10, 15:58:
Vcs-* fields are logically single line. That, to me, would be a "full stop sentence".If physically they are split over multiple lines this is fine, but logically they remain one line.
If this is the case, then IMO it's dpkg-source job to unfold the field, so that it appears a single line in dsc. Then debcheckout wouldn't require any changes.
(dpkg is already aware of existence of Vcs-* fields, so it should be okay to teach it also a bit about their semantics.)
-- Jakub Wilk