So, the problem is that newer versions of dpkg-mergechangelogs abort given a the 'ss-970814-1' package version, and builddeb doesn't correctly detect that case. Have sent a patch upstream to dpkg, and have a branch fixing both the log encoding handling and this error case for builddeb.
So, the problem is that newer versions of dpkg-mergechang elogs abort given a the 'ss-970814-1' package version, and builddeb doesn't correctly detect that case. Have sent a patch upstream to dpkg, and have a branch fixing both the log encoding handling and this error case for builddeb.