From the list of changes not to make to a package from Debian ...

[Martin Pitt]

Hi Scott,

since I sponsored this, I take some responsibility for this.

Scott Kitterman [2008-12-09 17:45 -0500]:
>       - Build-depends on quilt.
> [...]
>   * Converted patch system from dpatch to quilt.
> 
> Converting from one patch system to another is the kind of thing that should 
> be avoided.  We strive for a minimal difference from Debian.  

This actually was much less scary than a cursory glance of the
changelog might imply. The previous version in Debian/Ubuntu used
dpatch, and now Debian indicated moving to quilt by converting
debian/rules to it, however, they commented it out. So we just
followed suit and converted our remaining dpatch to quilt and
re-commented in the quilt inclusion in debian/rules.

I think this was a much saner thing to do than not using any patch
system at all now.

Martin

-- 
Martin Pitt                        | http://www.piware.de
Ubuntu Developer (www.ubuntu.com)  | Debian Developer  (www.debian.org)