Susan G. Kleinmann writes ("Bug#4263: dpkg-source requires patch"): ... > # dpkg-source -x sgmlspm_1.03ii-2.dsc > dpkg-source: extracting sgmlspm in sgmlspm-1.03ii > dpkg-source: failure: exec patch: No such file or directory > dpkg-source: failure: patch gave error exit status 2 ...
patch is only required by dpkg-source, and not to install packages. I've added it to Suggests and mentioned it in the Description. This will be in 1.3.10. Ian.