debian: remove .PHONY line completely This does not work in the case of implicit pattern matching rules as used by dh. Consider this example from Geoffrey Thomas: $ ls -l total 16 -rw-r--r-- 1 faheem faheem 17 Aug 16 20:27 blue.c -rw-r--r-- 1 faheem faheem 17 Aug 16 20:27 green.c -rw-r--r-- 1 faheem faheem 35 Aug 16 20:26 Makefile -rw-r--r-- 1 faheem faheem 17 Aug 16 20:27 red.c $ cat Makefile %: %.c gcc -o $@ $< .PHONY: blue $ make red gcc -o red red.c $ make green gcc -o green green.c $ make blue make: Nothing to be done for blue'. The Make manual (http://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/make.html#Phony-Targets) says Since it knows that phony targets do not name actual files that could be remade from other files, make skips the implicit rule search for phony targets (see Implicit Rules). Thanks to the good folks on #debian-mentors on OFTC for instruction and explanation in these matters.

debian: replace clean with override_dh_auto_clean The current version does not call the default dh_auto_build, which is a bug. This is required in particular for cleaning the build directories.

debian: replace build line with a override_dh_auto_build line This is more in line with how dh is supposed to work. In particular, dh_auto_build is functionally equivalent to the repeated "dh build --with python2 --buildsystem=python_distutils" used currently.

debian: remove clean target before implicit match rule This is redundant because it is a match-everything rule. Possibly a typo.