This is a quilt style package build with a quirky build directory hack. Look at /usr/share/doc/quilt/README.source for details on using quilt patch management with Debian packages. The working directory is in debian/build/. That is created by the "builddir" target and is used for all processing. Call "builddir" directly if you want to start with an unpatched copy of the source code in debian/build/. For example: debian/rules builddir The "patch" target will invoke the "builddir" target and apply the patches listed in debian/patches/series to the source files in debian/build/. For example: debian/rules patch debian/build/debian/ is a symlink to the top debian/ directory. The "clean" target will delete debian/build/. The "unpatch" target is available, but not used by the "clean" target.