First, I would like to challenge the assumption that Debian primarily uses SVN for packaging. We can get a rough idea from the use of Vcs-$name package metadat

First, I would like to challenge the assumption that Debian primarily uses SVN for packaging. We can get a rough idea from the use of Vcs-$name package metadata in the testing distribution: </var/lib/apt/lists/*_debian_dists_testing_main_source_Sources.lz4 unlz4 | sed -n '/^Vcs-Browser:/n;s/^Vcs-\([A-Za-z]*\): .*/\1/p' | sort | uniq -c On my system this gives: 4 Arch 72 Bzr 5 Cvs 5 Darcs 24168 Git 21 Hg 21 Mtn 603 Svn Which shows that git is the overwhelming favorite and about 40 times more popular than SVN for packages which provide VCS metadata. The sources can be pulled directly from Debian as tarballs using [syncpackage]. Ubuntu maintainers are free to use their preferred VCS for maintaining Ubuntu-specific packaging. Using the same VCS as the Debian maintainer (or upstream developer) is often convenient, but not required. [syncpackage]: https://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/precise/man1/syncpackage.1.html https://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/precise/man1/syncpackag...