diff --git a/dist/debian/.gitignore b/dist/debian/.gitignore
deleted file mode 100644
index f32f229..0000000
--- a/dist/debian/.gitignore
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,15 +0,0 @@
-*
-!.gitignore
-!arsse.*
-!compat
-!control
-!copyright
-!lintian-overrides
-!rules
-!config.php
-!dbconfig-common.php
-
-!source/
-source/*
-!source/lintian-overrides
-!source/format
diff --git a/dist/debian/pbuilder.sh b/dist/debian/pbuilder.sh
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..bb74b0a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/dist/debian/pbuilder.sh
@@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
+#! /bin/bash -e
+
+### 
+# This script is fed to pbuilder to build Debian packages. The base tarball
+# should be created with a command similar to the following:
+#
+#   sudo pbuilder create --basetgz pbuilder-arsse.tgz --mirror http://ftp.ca.debian.org/debian/ --extrapackages debhelper --extrapackages devscripts
+#
+# Thereafter pbuilder can be used to build packages with this command:
+#
+#   sudo pbuilder execute --basetgz pbuilder-arsse.tgz --bindmounts `basedir "/path/to/release/tarball"` -- pbuilder.sh "/path/to/release/tarball"
+#
+# This somewhat roundabout procedure is used because the pbuilder debuild
+# command does not seem to work in Arch Linux, nor does pdebuild. Doing
+# as much as possible within the chroot itself works around these problems.
+###
+
+# create a temporary directory
+tmp=`mktemp -d`
+
+# define various variables
+here=`dirname "$1"`
+tarball=`basename "$1"`
+version=`echo "$tarball" | grep -oP '\d+(?:\.\d+)*' | head -1`
+out="$here/debian"
+in="$tmp/arsse-$version"
+
+# create necessary directories
+mkdir -p "$in" "$out"
+# extract the release tarball
+tar -C "$in" -xf "$1" --strip-components=1
+# repackage the release tarball into a Debian "orig" tarball
+tar -C "$tmp" -czf "$tmp/arsse_$version.orig.tar.gz" "arsse-$version"
+# copy the "dist/debian" directory down the tree where Debian expects it
+cp -r "$in/dist/debian" "$in/debian"
+# build the package
+cd "$in"
+debuild
+# move the resultant files to their final destination
+find "$tmp" -maxdepth 1 -type f -exec mv '{}' "$out" \;