We keep all files of the debian subdirectory under SVN control, and upstream only as a compressed tarball. The rationale behind this is that changes to upstream files should be managed by the dpatch patch manager. Hence, all the diffs to upstream files are kept in a subdirectory of debian/, and it is not necessary to manage upstream on file-by-file basis.
The structure of the pkg-ocaml-maint SVN repository is as follows, where
generic names are indicated in square brackets [ .. ], and where the
contents of subdirectories not directly relevant for package management
are not detailed:
tags
packages
[package1]
[version1]
[version2]
...
[package2]
[version1]
...
...
projects
test
trunk
packages
[package1]
trunk
debian
tarballs
[upstream-tarball-version1]
[upstream-tarball-version2]
...
[package2]
...
policy
projects
tools