I've figured out that one can get a fresh tarball from http://pike.ida.liu.se/generated/pikefarm/packages/7.6/latest. What's the difference between that and checking out from CVS and running "make source" (which is what I suspect Marek has done), if any? Is there any archive of such tarballs except for the official releases?
The dists from Pikefarm are untagged and are bundled with gmp and nettle (snapshot_export).
By checking out from CVS you won't get the bundles. Building straight from CVS also requires an installed Pike (for Pike 7.2 and later).
The release dists are the same as the Pikefarm dists, but are tagged (full_export).
How did the packaging/debian subdirectory originally come to be? Do you synchronize with the Debian package yourself or has Marek been sending you patches? I see that export.pike adds new records to
Marek has commit access to the Pike repository.
packaging/debian/changelog. AFAICT, export.pike --tag first increments the build number (to an even number, typically), then tags, then increment the build number again, so that an even build number represents a known state of the source, whereas an odd build number can include any number of commits inbetween.
Correct.