Comment 3 for bug 836935

cjwatson@ries:~/ftp/pool/main/p/php-compat$ dpkg -c php-compat_1.6.0a3-1_all.deb | grep usr/share/doc/php-compat/tests/function/acosh.phpt
-rw-r--r-- root/root 263 2011-06-30 23:16 ./usr/share/doc/php-compat/tests/function/acosh.phpt

I think what happened is as follows:

  1) The Debian maintainer uploaded this package from a build directory where those files had newer mtimes, and those mtimes were copied into the .deb.
  2) dpkg-source does not create diff entries when only a file's timestamp differs between the original source and the build directory.
  3) As a result, when unpacked on a buildd and built afresh, it builds a .deb with ancient mtimes that would be rejected by dak and are rejected by Launchpad.

This package will fail in Debian too once Debian moves to throwing away maintainer-uploaded binaries and building them anew (which was discussed at DebConf and is supposed to be happening reasonably soon). As such, I would recommend filing a Debian bug about this, and fixing the package directly in Ubuntu if it's urgent (e.g. by explicitly touching the affected installed files).