Automatically bump versions when building a Debian package

Question

I have a set of Debian packaging scripts and I would like the version number of the package to be incremented each time it is built. (i.e. debian_revision as specified in the Debian Policy Manual) That is, the first build should be PACKAGE-1.0-0, then PACKAGE-1.0-0, and so on (where 1.0 is the upstream_version). Is there an easy way to specify this "extra" version number without having to create a new entry in the changelog?

I'm looking to have this automatically done by the Makefile for the project whenever a particular target (i.e. deb is built)

Answer 1

dh_* scritps read debian/changelog to build a changes files and set the versions, among other things, you should not change the version without edit the changelog, but if your problem is made the changes manually you can made a script what invoke

dch -i

or is your problem it's made changes at the debian/changelog made a bash script to change the version automatically.