Comment 5 for bug 245594

Where this is distasteful to me is that "binNMUs" (or whatever you want to call them) end up with binary packages that don't have a matching source package.

Even our backports packages alter the source before building, so the changelogs match, and you can get a source that matches the binaries. A "binNMU"-like mechanism means there will never be a source package 1.2.3-4+b1 that matches the same binary.

In practice, this isn't a huge deal, but it's still untidy and, IMO, the only reason Debian's done it this way is because doing a bunch of sourceful NMUs can make a lot of people grumpy, while we have no real concept of source ownership.

That said, an automated mechanism to rev SOURCE versions for rebuilds (much in the same way that backports currently work) might be less ugly in my mind. Keeping version numbers in step with Ubuntu policy, you'd end up with uploads that looked like:

1.2.3-4 -> 1.2.3-4build1
1.2.3-4ubuntu1 -> 1.2.3.-4ubuntu2

The other reason (besides "ugliness") for the above suggestion is that there are still packages which are not "binNMU-safe", and while Debian tends to catch most of those and fix them, there's nothing stopping us form having Ubuntu-specific packages which are unhappy with mismatched arch all/any builds, and other such whackiness, nor do we currently have (or need) any policy to enforce safety for a mechanism we've never used.