Two main things, I think: - coping with the variety of different patch systems used in Debian packages - an integrated way of keeping track of which locally-b

Two main things, I think: - coping with the variety of different patch systems used in Debian packages - an integrated way of keeping track of which locally-built packages have been installed Also of course getting pbuilder set up, and knowing that it's an option in the first place. In an ideal world I'd like to be able to say that the only knowledge you need to modify one of the programs on your system is the language that the program is written in, rather than having to also fill your head with bits of distro-specific arcana. I do think that things are better than they were even a few years ago (in particular, the variety-of-different-patch-systems situation is getting noticeably better).