I used this before to remember all the necessary commands, without reading the whole guide again and again. As I don’t upload many packages, it’s easy to forget the details…

This skips many one-time steps (like setting up launchpad access), error scenarios or even changed dependencies, but helps in trivial cases. For those more complex scenarios, check official docs.

1. Go to some empty work directory
   
   cd <some dir>

   1	cd <some dir>

2. Fetch previous version from repository. You will get some files and a directory “packagename-vesion”, called later <old-version-dir>
   
   sudo apt-get source <package-name>

   1	sudo apt-get source <package-name>

3. Same place, download the new tarball.
   
   wget <url to new source>

   1	wget <url to new source>

4. Enter the old package directory
   
   cd <old-version-dir>

   1	cd <old-version-dir>

5. Use uupdate to prepare new version’s directory. You may need to specify the new version explicitly
   
   uupdate -v <new-version (just the upstream number)> ../<upstream-tarball>

   1	uupdate -v <new-version (just the upstream number)> ../<upstream-tarball>

6. Go there
   
   cd ../<new-version-dir>

   1	cd ../<new-version-dir>

7. Update the changelog. The version should be something like <package-name>-<upstream-version>-0ubuntu0ppa0 (increase last 0 for minor ppa upgrades). Remember to set target distro correctly
   
   dch -i

   1

   dch -i

8. Check it builds fine
   
   debuild

   1

   debuild

9. Build source package
   
   debuild -S

   1	debuild -S

10. Upload it to launchpad
    
    dput ppa:<username>/<ppaname> <long-new-version>.changes

    1	dput ppa:<username>/<ppaname> <long-new-version>.changes

11. You should get an email that the package was accepted. After a while check the build status to make sure there were no problems.

Good luck!