+or use the value of this option. This option is not needed with the
+default mechanisms for accessing the archive.
+.TP
+.BR -h | --help
+Print a usage summary.
+.TP
+.BI --initiator-tempdir= directory
+dgit rpush uses a temporary directory on the invoking (signing) host.
+This option causes dgit to use
+.I directory
+instead. Furthermore, the specified directory will be emptied,
+removed and recreated before dgit starts, rather than removed
+after dgit finishes. The directory specified must be an absolute
+pathname.
+.TP
+.BI --no-rm-on-error
+Do not delete the destination directory if clone fails.
+.SH WORKFLOW - SIMPLE
+It is always possible with dgit to clone or fetch a package, make
+changes in git (using git-commit) on the suite branch
+.RB ( "git checkout dgit/" \fIsuite\fR)
+and then dgit push. You can use whatever gitish techniques you like
+to construct the commit to push; the only requirement is that it is a
+descendant of the state of the archive, as provided by dgit in the
+remote tracking branch
+.BR remotes/dgit/dgit/ \fIsuite\fR.
+
+If you are using dgit to do an NMU, and don't know about the
+maintainers' preferred packaging workflows, you should make your
+changes as a linear series of (logicially separated) commits on top of
+what's already in the archive.
+
+If you are lucky the other uploaders have also used dgit and
+integrated the other relevant git history; if not you can fetch it
+into your tree and cherry-pick etc. as you wish.
+.SH WORKFLOW - INTEGRATING BETWEEN DGIT AND OTHER GIT HISTORY
+If you are the maintainer of a package dealing with uploads made
+without dgit, you will probably want to merge the synthetic commits
+(made by dgit to represent the uploads) into your git history.
+Normally you can just merge the dgit branch into your own master, or
+indeed if you do your work on the dgit local suite branch
+.BI dgit/ suite
+you can just use dgit pull.
+
+However the first time dgit is used it will generate a new origin
+commit from the archive which won't be linked into the rest of your
+git history. You will need to merge this.
+
+If last upload was in fact made with git, you should usually proceed
+as follows: identify the commit which was actually used to build the
+package. (Hopefully you have a tag for this.) Check out the dgit
+branch
+.RB ( "git checkout dgit/" \fIsuite\fR)
+and merge that other commit
+.RB ( "git merge debian/" \fIversion\fR).
+Hopefully this merge will be trivial because the two trees should
+be the same. The resulting branch head can be merged into your
+working branches
+.RB ( "git checkout master && git merge dgit/" \fIsuite\fR).
+
+If last upload was not made with git, a different approach is required
+to start using dgit. First, do
+.B dgit fetch
+(or clone) to obtain a git history representation of what's in the
+archive and record it in the
+.BI remotes/dgit/dgit/ suite
+tracking branch. Then somehow, using your other git history
+plus appropriate diffs and cherry picks from the dgit remote tracking
+branch, construct a git commit whose tree corresponds to the tree to use for the
+next upload. If that commit-to-be-uploaded is not a descendant of the
+dig remote tracking branch, check it out and say
+.BR "git merge -s ours remotes/dgit/dgit/" \fIsuite\fR;
+that tells git that we are deliberately throwing away any differences
+between what's in the archive and what you intend to upload.
+Then run
+.BR "dgit push"
+to actually upload the result.
+.SH MODEL
+You may use any suitable git workflow with dgit, provided you
+satisfy dgit's requirements:
+
+dgit maintains a pseudo-remote called
+.BR dgit ,
+with one branch per suite. This remote cannot be used with
+plain git.
+
+The
+.B dgit-repos
+repository for each package contains one ref per suite named
+\fBrefs/dgit/\fR\fIsuite\fR. These should be pushed to only by
+dgit. They are fast forwarding. Each push on this branch
+corresponds to an upload (or attempted upload).
+
+However, it is perfectly fine to have other branches in dgit-repos;
+normally the dgit-repos repo for the package will be accessible via
+the remote name `origin'.
+
+dgit push will also (by default) make signed tags called
+.BI debian/ version
+and push them to dgit-repos, but nothing depends on these tags
+existing.
+
+dgit push can operate on any commit which is a descendant of the
+current dgit/suite tip in dgit-repos.
+
+Uploads made by dgit contain an additional field
+.B Dgit
+in the source package .dsc. (This is added by dgit push.)
+This specifies a commit (an ancestor of the dgit/suite
+branch) whose tree is identical to the unpacked source upload.
+
+Uploads not made by dgit are represented in git by commits which are
+synthesised by dgit. The tree of each such commit corresponds to the
+unpacked source; there is an origin commit with the contents, and a
+psuedo-merge from last known upload - that is, from the contents of
+the dgit/suite branch.
+
+dgit expects repos that it works with to have a
+.B dgit
+remote. This refers to the well-known dgit-repos location
+(currently, the dgit-repos project on Alioth). dgit fetch updates
+the remote tracking branch for dgit/suite.
+
+dgit does not (currently) represent the orig tarball(s) in git. The
+orig tarballs are downloaded (by dgit clone) into the parent
+directory, as with a traditional (non-gitish) dpkg-source workflow.
+You need to retain these tarballs in the parent directory for dgit
+build and dgit push.
+
+To a user looking at the archive, changes pushed using dgit look like
+changes made in an NMU: in a `3.0 (quilt)' package the delta from the
+previous upload is recorded in a new patch constructed by dpkg-source.
+.SH READ-ONLY DISTROS
+Distros which do not maintain a set of dgit history git repositories
+can still be used in a read-only mode with dgit. Currently Ubuntu
+is configured this way.
+.SH PACKAGE SOURCE FORMATS
+If you are not the maintainer, you do not need to worry about the
+source format of the package. You can just make changes as you like
+in git. If the package is a `3.0 (quilt)' package, the patch stack
+will usually not be represented in the git history.
+.SH FORMAT 3.0 (QUILT)
+For a format `3.0 (quilt)' source package, dgit may have to make a
+commit on your current branch to contain metadata used by quilt and
+dpkg-source.
+
+This is because `3.0 (quilt)' source format represents the patch stack
+as files in debian/patches/ actually inside the source tree. This
+means that, taking the whole tree (as seen by git or ls) (i)
+dpkg-source cannot represent certain trees, and (ii) packing up a tree
+in `3.0 (quilt)' and then unpacking it does not always yield the same
+tree.
+
+dgit will automatically work around this for you when building and
+pushing. The only thing you need to know is that dgit build, sbuild,
+etc., may make new commits on your HEAD. If you're not a quilt user
+this commit won't contain any changes to files you care about.
+
+You can explicitly request that dgit do just this fixup, by running
+dgit quilt-fixup.
+
+If you are a quilt user you need to know that dgit's git trees are
+`patches applied packaging branches' and do not contain the .pc
+directory (which is used by quilt to record which patches are
+applied). If you want to manipulate the patch stack you probably want
+to be looking at tools like git-dpm.
+.SH FILES IN THE SOURCE PACKAGE BUT NOT IN GIT
+This section is mainly of interest to maintainers who want to use dgit
+with their existing git history for the Debian package.
+
+Some developers like to have an extra-clean git tree which lacks files
+which are normally found in source tarballs and therefore in Debian
+source packages. For example, it is conventional to ship ./configure
+in the source tarball, but some people prefer not to have it present
+in the git view of their project.
+
+dgit requires that the source package unpacks to exactly the same
+files as are in the git commit on which dgit push operates. So if you
+just try to dgit push directly from one of these extra-clean git
+branches, it will fail.
+
+As the maintainer you therefore have the following options:
+.TP
+\(bu
+Persuade upstream that the source code in their git history and the
+source they ship as tarballs should be identical. Of course simply
+removing the files from the tarball may make the tarball hard for
+people to use.
+.IP
+One answer is to commit the (maybe autogenerated)
+files, perhaps with some simple automation to deal with conflicts and
+spurious changes. This has the advantage that someone who clones
+the git repository finds the program just as easy to build as someone
+who uses the tarball.
+.TP
+\(bu
+Have separate git branches which do contain the extra files, and after
+regenerating the extra files (whenever you would have to anyway),
+commit the result onto those branches.
+.TP
+\(bu
+Provide source packages which lack the files you don't want
+in git, and arrange for your package build to create them as needed.
+This may mean not using upstream source tarballs and makes the Debian
+source package less useful for people without Debian build
+infrastructure.
+.LP
+Of course it may also be that the differences are due to build system
+bugs, which cause unintended files to end up in the source package.
+dgit will notice this and complain. You may have to fix these bugs
+before you can unify your existing git history with dgit's.