[hereonout2]

That's not the experience I had.

The guide I linked to used to be linked to from the main docs page I believe - I went to double check and it now has this more recent guide linked instead - it seems equally thorough.

https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debmake-doc/

These guides were sufficient for me to learn packaging pretty complex Debian projects, and are linked to from the docs home page on the Debian site. Guess that's all I'm saying.