If debian/control has DOS newlines (\r\n), DpkgSourceControl fails to parse it:
control.load(f)
File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/minideblib/DpkgControl.py", line 128, in load
self.source = self._load_one( f )
File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/minideblib/DpkgControl.py", line 107, in _load_one
p.load( f )
File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/minideblib/DpkgControl.py", line 66, in load
key, value = string.split( line, ":", 1 )
ValueError: need more than 1 value to unpack