General comments: 1) Why do we need a $dbgdir? It is creating a package so just reuse pkgdir. The way I see the layout is: $startdir/pkg/pkgname /pkgname-debug Split packages already use the subdir in $startdir/pkg approach and I see no reason not to extend it for the single package approach. In fact, that is basically the only difference between single and split packages so it would unify that code. As part of that unification, we would get the backing up of variables before entering the package function so we could just override them as needed for the debug package creation. 2) I would much prefer having a flag (--dbgpkg?) over the adding of an option (perhaps with a default setting in makepkg.conf for those that want to always build debug packages). Adding an option in a PKGBUILD "forces" everyone to use it given it overrides makepkg.conf settings. 3) How does this interact with !strip? 4) How does this interact with "makepkg -i" 5) Should this only work with packages that are not arch=any? I.e. in a split package with some binary and some "any" packages, only the binary packages should have debug packages created. At the moment it looks like it will create an empty package. 6) I do not understand what secure_dir is needed for? I do not think that this was part of the original patch. Allan