[mehrdadn]

I've read more than one complaint about Debian's packaging process being a nightmare. I have no horse in the race, but since you're here, I wanted to mention this because it sounds like you're not aware of it (and could possibly help change things).

[NCommander]

No, I'm aware it is. Most of the problems is people trying to use it to distribute binary source code. Using it for source builds and debian/rules is a lot saner and straight forward.

These types of debs cause problems with system upgrades and I groan whenever I see something that uses checkinstall or similar; there are add-on deb sites that basically do that, and you get a mess in the resulting system. A lot of this is why snap got made.

I'll admit that the Debian package format could be better in this regard, but the packaging format is primarily for use by dpkg-buildpackage and building the distro.

Disclaimer: this is my own views and not those of either the Debian or Ubuntu projects.

[mehrdadn]

Interesting... by "binary source code" do you mean "binary" (executables)? Do you mean you see distributing binaries as a not-intended use case for .debs, and that they should all result in builds straight from source? Or am I misunderstanding what you're saying? Because I feel like the people who use Debian or Ubuntu (or Arch or Fedora or...) aren't really longing for the experience of building everything from source like Gentoo users might.