I downloaded the files for Mercurial 1.5.2 from http://packages.debian.org/sid/mercurial (mercurial_1.5.2-1.debian.tar.gz, mercurial_1.5.2-1.dsc and mercurial_1.5.2.orig.tar.gz). How do I get a .deb package out of these? I tried to follow the instructions at http://www.debian.org/doc/maint-guide/ch-build.en.html but they don't work.

I tried to unpack the two archives and run dpkg-buildpackage or debian/rules build but that fails with:

dh --with quilt clean
   dh_testdir
   debian/rules override_dh_auto_clean
make[1]: Entering directory `/home/user/packages/mercurial-deb'
cp -a mercurial/__version__.py mercurial/__version__.py.save
cp: cannot stat `mercurial/__version__.py': No such file or directory
make[1]: *** [override_dh_auto_clean] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/user/packages/mercurial-deb'
make: *** [clean] Error 2

That's because the directory mercurial is inside mercurial_1.5.2/. Why doesn't the build script cd into the right place? If I try ../debian/rules build, I get

dh --with quilt build
dh: cannot read debian/control: No such file or directory

sigh

How do I compile a package for debian???