Using quilt with debhelper -------------------------- If you use the dh command provided by debhelper 7, you can simply call it with "dh --with quilt" and dh_quilt_patch/dh_quilt_unpatch will be called at the right time. Otherwise you can manually call dh_quilt_patch / dh_quilt_unpatch at the right place, see their respective manpages for examples. dh supports the --with parameter since debhelper (>= 7.0.8) and quilt provides the required debhelper plugin since quilt (>= 0.46-7). Using quilt with CDBS --------------------- You can include /usr/share/cdbs/1/rules/patchsys-quilt.mk in debian/rules and be done with it. If you use DEB_SRCDIR you might want to set DEB_QUILT_TOPDIR to "." so that quilt patches are applied in the current directory and not in DEB_SRCDIR. This will ensure compatibility with the "3.0 (quilt)" source format. Using quilt in other packages ----------------------------- You can include /usr/share/quilt/quilt.make in debian/rules and modify your rules to depend on the targets provided by this Makefile (unpatch and $(QUILT_STAMPFN)). Here's an example: include /usr/share/quilt/quilt.make clean: unpatch ... build: $(QUILT_STAMPFN) ...