I think think that separation is not helping me at all, and I'd really prefer the standard layout that gbp-buildpackage suggests: http://honk.sigxcpu.org/projects/git-buildpackage/manual-html/gbp.intro.html#gbp.repository Note that the 'upstream' branch regularily gets merged into the packaging branch. This seems to be different with your packaging style. merging the upstream sources enables using tools such as license-reconcile, dgit, and similar. Thanks for your understanding.