Trying to remember how to build a package some months back I ran into all the old headaches. Debian packaging is ancient, and the packages don't provide all the information and functionality other package management formats do. Trying to contribute a package (much less write one) is a pain. The structure of the files and how to build them seems over-complicated, and at the same time not very useful. The tools largely rely on a bunch of weird magic variables to fix common problems. Modern conventions could be added as tool shortcuts, like installing a package once in a container and then cleaning up all the crap you don't need before saving the layer. Navigating the website requires a high degree of tribal knowledge that no other distribution does (compare looking for packages across Debian releases to looking for packages across Alpine releases, as a neophyte). Why do source packages have to be renamed when nobody else does this?
Is there a sort of "wish list" or "suggestions box" for Debian? This is something I wish I had at work, but not sure how to manage it.