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

[Scott Kitterman]

On Tuesday 09 December 2008 17:53, Martin Pitt wrote:
> 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.

Thanks for clarifying.  That is, indeed, much less scary than the 
debian/changelog reading caused me to believe.

Scott K