dgit 4.2, which is now in Debian unstable, has a new subcommand: dgit push-source. This is just like dgit push, except that

• it forces a source-only upload; and
• it also takes care of preparing the _source.changes, transparently, without the user needing to run dpkg-buildpackage -S or dgit build-source or whatever.

push-source is useful to ensure you don’t accidently upload binaries, and that was its original motivation. But there is a deeper significance to this new command: to say

% dgit push-source unstable

is, in one command, basically to say

% git push ftp-master HEAD:unstable

That is: dgit push-source is like doing a single-step git push of your git HEAD straight into the archive! The future is now!

The contrast here is with ordinary dgit push, which is not analogous to a single git push command, because

• it involves uploading .debs, which make a material change to the archive other than updating the source code of the package; and
• it must be preceded by a call to dpkg-buildpackage, dgit sbuild or similar to prepare the .changes file.

While dgit push-source also involves uploading files to ftp-master in addition to the git push, because that happens transparently and does not require the user to run a build command, it can be thought of as an implementation detail.

Two remaining points of disanalogy:

1. git push will push your HEAD no matter the state of the working tree, but dgit push-source has to clean your working tree. I’m thinking about ways to improve this.

2. For non-native packages, you still need an orig.tar in ... Urgh. At least that’s easy to obtain thanks to git-deborig.