The Debian ghetto

The "ghetto" dig seems unearned to me. The error message isn't great, but this post is largely much todo about nothing. Software worked in a way you found non-obvious and opaque, we can discuss that till the cows come home but it doesn't explain the mini-tantrum documented in the blogpost.

The first two things I thought to google off that error message ("native package version may not have a revision", '"native package" revision') lead to a workaround as the first result, and an explanation of the limitation respectively.

I don't know anything about debian packaging beyond the time I used deb-src to grab a package and debug a PAM module, and I won't defend their packaging process and tools as I don't know them. But even I know the difference between quilt and native packages, something your manged to come out the other end of this process without stumbling into. If documentation reads "You should only use a native Debian package when it is clear that the package would only ever be of use in Debian," I'm not going to fault Debian for not giving you the version number flexibility you're angry they only provide to quilt (non-native) packages.

You assert "The Debian team will X" as if you somehow know the Debian team well enough to predict how they'll respond to the suggestion while simultaneously not knowing the Debian project well enough to grasp the basics of their packaging format? I should have just stopped reading when you admitted your only two debugging tools were google and printf.