The problem is that git cannot create tags which contain ":". To make my point more cleas: what we could do is to replace the ":" with a "_" in the git tag, not in debian/changelog. So a command like: $ d1h stage 2:1.3.27+devuan1.7 would create a regular entry in debian/changelog with version number 2:1.3.27+devuan1.7 but the associated git tag would be called 2_1.3.27+devuan1.7 The only other option I see is to forget the epoch number in the git tag (again, only in the git tag, not in debian/changelog). To be honest, I would actually prefer the second solution (i.e., dropping the epoch in the git tag). HND KatolaZ